Jerry is dividing time between a novel in progress and his Web site, but also finds time to test a new high-end laptop. For a full report, read Virtual Publishing-and Virtual Travel in the October issue of BYTE.
Jerry Pournelle
I'm pretty sure there's not a plot to drive me mad
, but sometimes I wonder.
I've been fooling with my Web site. (Go to
http://home.earthlink.net/~jerryp
.) Incidentally, my thanks to those of you who took the trouble to look it over and make suggestions. I also wonder about the few who hated it and sent
long and detailed messages about how it ought to be so much better. Of course, it ought to be better, but if I had time to make it prettier, I wouldn't have time to write anything to put on it. Oh well.
I did upload some pictures. There are a couple of shots of Chaos Manor, one of Larry Niven in the Great Hall, and even a picture of the stuffed corpse of the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham, and no, I'm not making that up.
I am told, and I'm prepared to believe, that Word 97 isn't as good a tool for Web-site construction as FrontPage 97 or Publisher 97. Given the stresses of this month, I had no time to learn them; when I had a few m
oments to work on my Web site, I used Word 97 on the grounds that I already know it. Alas, that wasn't too bright.
Word 97 makes it easy to insert pictures into a Word file. Just hit the insert picture command, browse until you find the picture, and open it. Couldn't be simpler. Moreover, provided that the picture file is in the same directory as the HTML file, there's no problem about paths, either on your local machine or after you upload to your Internet service provider (ISP).
Last night, I downloaded a bunch of pictures from my wonderful Olympus D-300L digital camera. Incidentally, Olympus has recently upgraded their software to make it much easier to use. It's not simple enough for Aunt Minnie, but I don't think any BYTE reader will have trouble, and you'll love the results. I built a "Pictures" file, and yes, I know, I could have done it another way, but I was in a hurry. I used Adobe Photoshop to "flatten" the pictures into JPEG compressed format, pasted them into a file called Pictures.ht
ml, added captions and lines to separate picture/caption pairs, and voilá.It makes for a big document to download, so I warned people about that in the sentence linking Pictures.html to my home page. Then I fired up Netscape Communicator, set to look at local files. I tried to be sure all the pictures linked properly and looked all right. Everything looked fine.
Earthlink provides 2 MB of disk space free with your basic account and lets you download a wonderful FTP program that has two windows. One shows the files on the remote (Earthlink) site; the other shows the files in whatever directory on your hard drive you've chosen as a staging area. Of course, you don't have to copy or move all the files you're going to upload to a staging directory, but it's the best way for me. Control-click all the files you intend to upload, punch the transfer arrow (one arrow points to the remote location and another points to your local directory, and files copy exactly as you expect them to), and Bob's your uncl
e.
Now to check. Fire up Communicator again and look at earthlink.net/home/~jerryp. The home page looks fine. Find the Pictures link and click on that. Document comes up. First picture comes up. And no more pictures. None. Zero.
I'd had this problem before, so I knew: the difficulty is true names.
DOS, Windows 95, and Windows NT ignore case in filenames; so far as they are concerned, Niven.jpg and NIVEN.JPG are the same file. Alas, Earthlink, like most ISPs, operates on Unix, and Unix is extraordinarily case-sensitive. Moreover, most Unix people prefer filenames in lowercase. Clearly, Pictures.html was providing links to files with the same name but in different case.
I work with two networked machines, Cyrus, the Cyrix 6x86-P166, and Princess, the Compaq Professional Workstation 5000 with dual 200-MHz Pentium Pro processors running NT 4.0. I left Cyrus on-line and brought up Word 97 on Princess. Word 97 has a "view html source" option; when I did that, I could see the exact case expec
ted for each linked file. They were all fouled up. For some reason, when you use Word 97 to make automatic links to a file you select by browsing, it randomizes the case name it puts into the HTML source. I realize this sounds absurd, but I don't have any other conclusion: I had links to files called Eric.jpg, NIVEN.jpg, Sopranos.JPG, and other interesting combinations.
Well, I thought, I'll fix this. I went to a DOS window and said REN "niven.jpg" "NIVEN.jpg." Copy the renamed NIVEN file to Cyrus; use FTP to upload it to Earthlink. Look at the Pictures link and punch the "reload" button (since Communicator, like most modern browsers, caches previously seen pages and doesn't automatically refresh the cache). That ought to do it. It didn't. There was still no picture of Niven on the Web.
I won't go through the other things I tried. Eventually, I hit on two solutions.
First, the wonderful FTP program I got from Earthlink shows the true name of a file as seen in the remote directory on Earthlin
k -- and has a "rename" command that is case-sensitive. By looking at the HTML source, I could determine the exact filename Pictures.html was telling Unix to look for and rename that file appropriately. Niven's file became NIVEN.jpg, the picture of the stars of the latest LA Opera production became Sopranos.JPG, and so forth. That worked fine, and all the pictures are now visible. Fair warning: it takes a while to download them all.
As it happens, there's a simpler method. Explorer actually knows and will show the true name of a file, and it will let you rename that file using any case you like. That's only in Explorer. If you double-click on the C-drive icon and open a file directory, it may or may not show the true names of files -- it is not consistent about that -- but one thing is certain: if you rename that file, nothing will change. So much for the vaunted drag-and-drop icon management.
Me, if I were designing an OS, I'd think it a serious bug that one view (Explorer) of a filename showed i
t properly, while another (the usual double-click to open a directory) shows a false name and appears to accept renaming commands but in fact simply ignores them if the rename operation is a case change. I'd also think any serious user test would find that problem. Then, of course, I remembered I was a beta tester for both Windows 95 and NT, and I didn't find that problem....
Note that I said I "flattened" my pictures in Photoshop. The newest Olympus software saves pictures in JPEG if you batch-file the download; but if you continue to bring them in one at a time, they are saved in PhotoDeluxe (PDD) format. You may or may not have to rename them to have an extension of PSD to read them into Photoshop, but once you have them there, you'll want to convert to JPEG to put them on the Web. Photoshop can do that handily, but you have to "flatten" the picture first. This is an option in the menu item Layers, and it's neither intuitive nor well documented. Once you know the trick, you aren't likely to forget it
.
Meanwhile, David Em, our Chaos Manor artist associate
, has been continuing his explorations in the world of high-end graphics; this month, he reports on input devices.
"I've been making notes on a variety of graphics input devices since the start of the year. Choosing input devices is personal, because no two people are built quite the same way, nor do any two people work the same way. Even an individual's work patterns and needs vary tremendously depending on the application he or she is using.
"Another factor in selecting the right input device is the fact that many programs, particularly 3-D programs, involve extremely repetitious actions, such as clicking on a mouse for hours on end. I've more than once had to stop work for a day or so because my index or middle finger decided to stop cooperating.
"My solution for this is to have several input devices available while I'm working. I've got each of the graphics systems wired up a little differently, but I've boiled it down to
four devices: keyboard, mouse, touchpad, and pressure-sensitive tablet. Certain models of each have improved my work flow in significant ways.
"The winner in the keyboard department is the one on Lazarus, our Intergraph TDZ-425 workstation. Not only is this a solid keyboard, it has a decent set of speakers and a microphone built into it. Best of all, it has a volume knob. It's amazing how often I find myself using it, and an analog control beats a simulated slide control on a monitor any day.
"Much to my surprise, my current mouse of choice is Microsoft's IntelliMouse. When I first saw it, it struck me as gimmicky. But now that I've spent some quality time with it, I like it a lot, especially for writing and editing text. For one thing, using the rollerball to move up and down a document at my own pace makes working with words on a screen a lot easier on my eyes. And for another thing, it's a heck of a lot more accurate than hitting PageUp and PageDown every time you want to move around your docum
ent.
"Mice tend to wander around tabletops and get tangled up with everything in sight, however, so a while back, I started working with touchpads. Touchpads stay put and use a different set of muscles than do mice, so if you do a lot of mouse work (and who doesn't), a touchpad can give your hand a much-needed break. The ones I've worked with are made by Alps, which I believe provides a lifetime guarantee for them.
"Touchpads (or mushpads, as they're also known) are also my input device of choice for portables, but my thumbs are always drifting across them, invoking all sorts of unexpected actions. I find that by disabling the built-in mushpad and installing a second one as an external input device, I not only eliminate the problem, but it's much easier to use, too.
"Probably the most important input device for graphic artists is a pressure-sensitive digital pen and tablet combination. For anyone even mildly serious about graphics, a tablet is not an option, it's an absolute necessity. Tryi
ng to draw with a mouse is about as practical as trying to draw with a potato.
"I've tried a number of tablets over the years, but the ones I like best are from Wacom (
http://www.wacom.com
). Wacom tablets come in a variety of sizes. The one I work with the most is the 6- by 8-inch ArtZ II. This may not seem very big, but it's quite adequate for painting with programs such as MetaTools Painter 5 or retouching photographs with Photoshop 4.0.
"Here are some tips about working with tablets. When I'm using a drawing or paint program, I always make sure my tablet is centered in front of the monitor. You'd be surprised how off the mark your strokes can be if your tablet is a few inches off center. If you think you have hand-eye coordination problems, give this a try.
"The ArtZ II is also just the right size
to put in your lap while you work. For some reason, the stylus is easier to control this way.
"Over the years, I've customized my tablets. Instead of leaving your tablet flat on the table, tilt it up about 15 degrees. You'll find your control over the pen has improved, and your hand doesn't get as tired. I use a plastic cookbook holder (the transparent kind you use to hold up the book so you can follow a recipe while you're cooking) on its side, which provides just the right angle.
"Another trick is to tape a piece of typing paper over the surface of the tablet. The Wacom tablets come with a slick piece of plastic for a drawing surface, which provides nearly zero drag for the pen. Believe me, when you're drawing, you want a little tooth on your "canvas," otherwise your pen slips and slides all over the surface. And when you're not using the tablet, it makes a good mouse pad.
"Wacom has also just introduced a tablet called the PenPartner, which comes with a cordless, batteryless, pressure-sen
sitive UltraPen. The PenPartner has 1000-lines-per-inch resolution compared to the ArtZ II's 2540, but that's still far more accurate than a mouse and plenty precise for anything but extremely exacting technical illustrations.
"The big news is that it lists for under a hundred bucks, so if you have any real interest in graphics, there is no longer anything standing between you and pressure sensitivity. In a certain sense, it could be the best investment you ever make in a computer. I'm still happily using the ArtZ I bought five years ago, whereas I've been through a half dozen CPU, disk, and graphics card revisions over the same period of time.
"If you have young kids who are ready for computing, you might consider getting a kidDraw tablet from kidBoard (
http://www.kidboard.com/
). The blue tablet looks
cool and is very rugged, with the pen firmly attached by a wire. The company also makes a matching yellow keyboard, and a more sensitive tablet, called Pablo, for older kids.
"These tablets are both Windows 95 and Mac-compatible, and if my two-year-old son's yelps of excitement while he used it are anything to go by, you won't find a much better interface for interactive drawing programs such as KidPix. Highly recommended.
"A few notes about output devices. A few months ago, I reported some problems with our Alps MV2010 printer. Well, the problems were human error; the printer was fine all along. This is still my desktop printer of choice, because its inks are about the only ones on the market that offer any degree of permanence. It has some trouble with subtly graduated spreads over large areas, but for most desktop printing jobs, its quality is excellent.
"The other outstanding output device we've just gotten a look at is the one I'm using to write this report. Intergraph lent us a 28-inch H
DTV-format monitor for a couple of weeks. Alex and I set it up earlier this evening, and it's a beauty. We'll have a lot more to say about it after we put it through its paces, but for now, let's just say it's like CinemaScope on the desktop.
"Finally, we've got a few new Web design tools in house that are worth mentioning.
"For very simple pages, I still think Word 97 is the ticket, simply because it's so easy. But if you want to do something more elaborate, you might consider Adobe's (
http://www.adobe.com/
) PageMill 2.0, which is both intuitive and powerful.
"The most full-featured package I've seen is Macromedia's (
http://www.macromedia.com/
) Backstage Internet Studio 2, which is a big improvement over the previous version. Backstage 2's site and remote database management features are outstanding. Caligari's (
http://www.caligari.com/
) trueSpace3 remains my top choice for creating 3-D Virtual World Browser content, and while I haven't had time to do much with it yet, the expanded Web capabilities of Macromedia's Director 6 Multimedia Studio make it a compelling authoring tool for on-line multimedia.
"Perhaps the most intriguing package, however, is Hyperwire from Kinetix (
http://www.ktx.com/
), which lets you create
fairly complex Java scripts without writing a line of code. Hyperwire lets you drag and drop icons of objects such as sounds, images, timers, and random-number generators into a work area, and connect the elements through a system of inputs and outputs. Once everything is wired up, you can run it as a script and export it to your Web site. Pretty cool. I suspect programs like this are going to lead us to the art of the year 2000."
I recently got a couple of huge programs sent to me by e-mail.
Normally, I don't much care; my e-mail is automatically downloaded in the background, so it's not important how long it takes. Alas, this time I was in a hotel room at 9600 bps. To make it worse, I was paying by the minute for the phone connection; so a 2-MB shareware program was not exactly what I wanted. Even worse, the mail comes in a queue, so if you don't download every message, you won't know what messages you've missed.
This could get serious.
What we need is a way to look at e-mail and deci
de which messages we want and which can be put off for a while. MCI Mail has always had that feature, and so does BIX. With BIX, I usually let an automation program called Galahad go get my mail and conferences while I do something else. For that matter, lately I've had Mailroom do the same thing for MCI Mail. These automation programs don't have much in the way of filters; if you use automatic mail handling, you pretty much get all or nothing.
With MCI Mail and BIX, I can log on manually, look at the mailbox, and bring down only the messages I want. Internet mail doesn't seem to have that option: if there are 22 messages, you get them all, like it or not. At least that's what happens to me. I keep hearing about filter programs, but they seem to work on mail after it has been downloaded, rather than stop it coming in the first place. What I want is a way to leave big messages on the ISP server until I get home from a trip.
I don't really like filters anyway: I get a lot of mail, and while some of
it is worthless, most is from readers and nearly always interesting. (The exception is when I have said something about Apple or the Mac. That always generates a pile of e-mail, most nearly identical, from people who didn't read what I said but are reacting to what someone told them I said. Much of it starts out politely but rapidly becomes shrill, as the MacTribesmen try to get my attention so that I will understand their pain. And some of the Mac e-mail starts off by saying, "You don't do these terrible things, but let me tell you about other writers. Flame on!") But most of my mail is interesting, and reading what my readers think comes with the job.
Anyway, if there's a good answer to e-mail overload, I don't have it, and I'd appreciate suggestions.
We gave Eric Pobirs, Chaos Manor intern and resident games fanatic
, the Diamond Multimedia Monster Sound board to test. Eric has this to say:
"When I first opened the Supra modem box the other day, it was in expectation of it being an i
nternal unit. The mysterious modem connector on the Monster Sound board had left me wondering, "Connect to what?" I don't recall seeing an appropriate jack on internal modems, but it may be because I've gotten used to ignoring a feature that is never used.
"One point that can be noted about the Monster Sound board is that it represents a cutoff point with the PC past and a commitment to Microsoft. The board is functional only within Windows. A DOS program that is so nasty it won't run in a box cannot use the Sound Blaster emulation mode of the board. You can use the board in tandem with a DOS audio device, but then you get into the problem of interrupt request (IRQ) availability. The other issue is the Windows-centric design. I can't think of any reason an OS such as Linux couldn't provide functions compatible with Microsoft's DirectSound API, but I haven't heard of anybody offering that yet.
"This is by and large a gaming issue. I can't think of any other category of DOS program where audio is cr
itical. If someone is deeply attached to an old game that won't behave under Windows, I can only suggest that an old DOS machine with adequate performance for an old game can be had pretty cheap.
"On the plus side, the Monster Sound board has many assets that will hopefully become industry standards. By combining a PCI-bus master and a good amount of on-board intelligence, the Monster Sound board makes tremendously less demands on the CPU than a typical ISA audio board. Diamond claims that a Sound Blaster can tie up as much as 30 percent of CPU time, but the Monster Sound board should rarely go above 5 percent usage. If so, much existing software would get a big boost just by switching audio boards. The cost of the new board would be somewhat mitigated by delaying the need for an OverDrive upgrade.
"The joystick/MIDI port is also handled by the board's own processor, eliminating another drain on CPU time. Both factors can be significant no matter how fast a machine you're running. Because audio an
d joysticks have always sat on ISA, their performance has always been limited by the pokey speed of that bus. A Pentium Pro 200 would have to waste just as much real time for audio processing as a 486/100 machine. This alone is great incentive to get rid of ISA devices, as well as shifting the keyboard and mouse to universal serial bus (USB).
"The other big factor is true 3-D sound. This is a compelling feature, but only if properly supported by new games. Diamond appears to be doing a good job of evangelizing, but these things are always iffy. Another big question mark is digital videodisc (DVD). The standard for DVD playback includes a 3-D audio system, Dolby Digital AC-3, that is already well established in home theater and certain to become standard fare on PCs as a part of the overall standard. I wouldn't be surprised to see Diamond integrate the descendant of the Monster Sound board into a complete DVD upgrade kit and to the OEM market. Current DVD hardware calls for separate boards for AV decodin
g and PC audio. If Diamond can combine the two in a single slot, it could have a strong price/performance advantage over the competition."
We had a problem connecting the CD-ROM drive to the Monster Sound board; this wasn't Diamond's fault, since they included cables that would work with most standard CD-ROM drives. Eric made two trips to Fry's Electronics before bringing back a cable that would feed the CD-ROM output into the Monster Sound board.
"On the cable issue, I have to say it was as much my fault as theirs if only because it should have taken only one trip to Fry's to find the right one. The need to chain in the decoder board from the DVD kit complicated the issue. I would suggest that DVD kit vendors should bundle a multiheaded cable like the one we ended up with to save problems. It might add a buck to the cost of the package, but if a buyer returns the product out of frustration, that costs much more, and DVD drives are going to be a lot more common in the future."
I note that Eric
has left the Monster Sound board in RacingCow, the machine he uses most; and I'm very impressed with the sound quality we're getting. Recommended, provided you understand the problems you will have with DOS games.
JE Software offers at $29.95 a program called ErrorScan 2.5
, which, despite the misleading name, is a file-deletion utility. It will search through your disk drives and find all files with certain file extensions like .tmp. It will also find files whose name begins with ~ and other such stuff. You can add file characteristics to look for.
Having found these files, you can kill them, one at a time or en masse. ErrorScan has some built-in protectionsÑit won't kill files created in the current session unless you tell it to. Similarly, it will protect .exe and .dll files.
When I ran this, I was astonished at how much useless junk had accumulated on my hard drives. ErrorScan won't do anything you can't do with repeated passes of the QDOS recursive file utility commands, but it doe
s it all in one pass, logs the effort, and keeps you from making egregious mistakes. All told, a useful thing to have.
I've had negative experiences with uninstallation programs, but lately, my machines have so much garbage in them that I was willing to try again. I asked Eric to look at several. Here's his report on the one he likes:
"When Microsoft created Windows 95, it made a sincere effort to address the hideous mess that Window 3.x programs could create. Tracking down and deleting all the bits of a Windows program was an arduous task. Win 95 has a built-in facility to allow the complete removal of unwanted applications, but this is dependent on the programs. They must be properly designed, and often the original medium must be on hand.
"One such case was the beta version of Office 97. It was so evil it never saw any use, and the CD was tossed. Three months later, it was no longer possible to boot up the system without clicking through a series of annoying expiration notices. Without the
original CD, the only way to kill the messages was to manually try to evict Office or to install the immense shipping version. Neither option held much appeal.
"Luckily, however, Cybermedia offered a third choice. Uninstaller, recently acquired from the wreckage of Microhelp, saved the day. My past experience with uninstallation utilities wasn't very positive, but Uninstaller took out all traces of every program I sicced it on and through Cybermedia's Oil Change system should have no problem keeping up with new releases.
"In short, it works. It may not be worth buying by itself, but don't be surprised to see it integrated into First Aid in the near future.
"At the rate First Aid improves, it should be considered essential equipment."
I'm weary of the incredible sloppiness in computer programming books.
It's bad enough that the programming languages themselves no longer come with documentation other than the often useless on-line help, but now third-party books are rushed into prin
t with inadequate indexes and a startling lack of examples.
For instance, Sams Publishing's Visual Basic 4 Unleashed (ISBN 0-672-30620-4) is an enormous book, over 1000 pages, and you'd think it would be complete; but it isn't. To its credit, it has the only discussion I've found so far of Class Modules, which are new to Visual Basic 4. The discussion presents a FileClass Module, with its source code listed on the accompanying CD-ROM; this will, if implemented, give you access to commands like FileExist(Filename), which is exactly what I need for a program I'm doing. Unfortunately, the miserable book doesn't give an example of how to implement the FileClass Module's new commands.
First, it tells you to "add the file to a VB project." That turns out to be harder to do than you think, because if you create a new Class Module and insert the source code file from the book's CD-ROM, the project won't run until you comment out some stuff, part of which may be needed, for all I know.
Then the book
tells you to "call it by instantiating an object of the FileClass type." There's no example of how to do that, and needless to say, neither "instantiate" nor anything remotely like it are in the index to that or any other Visual Basic book, nor in the VB Help file. I presume this is pretend English for "define an instance" or some such. The book also tells you that you can use the GetObject method. Of course, there's neither index nor table of contents reference to GetObject.
I am also told to "Add the Assert() function to a module in your project." No examples. No index reference to any "assert." A short note that this is "based on C language ASSERT macros," which might be wonderful if I were a C programmer, but I hate C. I'm using Visual Basic precisely because I don't want to learn C or C++ or any of the other write-only code languages that plague us.
There's even less discussion (and no examples) of Class Modules in Que's Visual Basic By Example or Sams' Teach Yourself Visual Basic in 21 Days
and Essential Visual Basic; and the on-line help files are not at all helpful.
I could list hundreds of other examples of sloppy presentations in which I'm teased with the possibility of accomplishing something I want to do, but given no examples, and the discussion makes reference to incomprehensible terms that are neither defined nor listed in the book's index. Apparently, all programming books are now written by people whose brains have been turned to mush by programming in C.
I realize that professional programmers deep down inside don't want the rest of us competing with them. There's no other explanation for the survival of C. Now, though, they seem to have managed to corrupt the people who write about BASIC, so that's becoming as arcane as C. All this is important because the first phase of the computer revolution, in which programmers learned interesting things to teach the computer, is nearly over, and the real computer revolution will come when people who know how to do interesting thing
s can program. I wonder when that will be?
When I find a decent programming book, I'll let you know; for the moment, I'm disgusted with all of them.
Product Information
ErrorScan
JE Software
404 North Terrace Ave
Mount Vernon, NY 10552
Phone: 914-699-6710
Fax: 914-699-6969
E-mail:
jesoftware@aol.com
Internet:
http://www.jesoft.com
Monster Sound
Diamond Multimedia
San Jose, CA
Phone: 800-468-5846
Fax: 408-325-7070
Internet:
http://www.diamondmm.com/
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Jerry Pournelle is a science fiction writer and BYTE's senior contributing editor. You can write to Jerry c/o BYTE, 29 Hartwell Ave., Lexington, MA 02173. Please include a self-addressed, stamped envelope and put your address on the letter as well as on the envelope. Due to the high volume of letters, Jerry cannot guarantee a personal reply. You can also contact him on the Internet or BIX at
jerryp@bix.com
. Visit Chaos Manor at
http://home.earthlink.net/~jerryp/
.
WEB EXCLUSIVE: Sometimes I Wonder
