
  
  





                       W  I  N  D  O  W  A  T  C  H



             The Electronic Windows Magazine of the Internet





  
   Vol.2  No.10                                            December 1996
  

  page 2
                              WHAT'S INSIDE
   Vol.2  No.10                                            December 1996
  

                               The Editor's Soapbox  Lois Laulicht
        Behind the Scenes: Creating the Art Gallery  Herb Chong
  Teaching Old Dogs New Tricks: HTML III-A Tutorial  Gregg Hommel
  Taming of the Wild DNS: A MetaInfo Product Review  Jim Plumb
                             Terraforming Templates  Jack Passarella
                       Reflections of A ModemJunkie  Leonard Grossman
    Corel Presentations: WordPerfect Suite Part III  Frank McGowan
          Adobe's PhotoDeluxe for Windows: A Review  Linda Rosenbaum
   Adobe's Acrobat v.3 Flies High: A Product Review  Lois Laulicht
               Charles Babbage - A Computer Pioneer  Russ Jensen
                             The Making of a Genius  David Kindle
                                     Internet Humor  An Anonymous Collection
                                Cookies in the Oven  Daniel Christle
                    Searching for the Middle Ground  Lois Laulicht
                         The WindoWatch Art Gallery  Original Work from
                                                       Paul Kinnaly and
                                                             Herb Chong
                                      The Last Word  Ben M. Schorr


  page 3
  WindoWatch              The Electronic Windows Magazine of the Internet
   Volume 2  No. 10                                        December 1996
  


                          The Editor's Soapbox


More on Privacy!

We've talked about violations of privacy as well as questions of who, if
anyone, should legally be able to access private information belonging
to thee and me. We have not yet discussed information which has been
accidentally made public. If one were paranoid, one could call a lawyer,
run a full page advertisement, organize a boycott and generally create a
stink.

Can't happen you say?  Well friends, it did - and to me!

I was doing a routine search to make sure that earlier links had been
corrected leading to our new page. Imagine my chagrin when I found
personal information about my business affairs available for anyone to
snag. This was information I had provided online to a well known and
respected magazine in order to receive their free subscription. You know
the deal! In order to receive the publication you must provided them
with information about you and your business. How it happened to be made
available to the bot making a routine run is not so obvious given the
assurance of a secure server and the dubious unbroken gold key of my
browser. Indeed!

Take a look at my piece Searching for the Middle Ground in this issue of
WindoWatch where we talk about invasions of privacy that seem to be
calculated and I believe quite dangerous. My good friend Dan Christle
takes a more benign view in his Cookies in the Oven, this issue as well.


We have another pair of articles of a more historical bent. The notion
that the conceptual framework of the computer had been thought out well
before the mechanics were invented must give modernists pause. Russ
Jensen and David Kindle, both new to WindoWatch, have contributed
articles; one on Charles Babbage the other on Abigail Ada Byron King.
Very ego deflating when looking at our place in computer history.

And finally, the holidays are here again and those of us associated with
WindoWatch want to wish our friends and supporters the Happiest
Chanukah, the Merriest Xmas, and the most peaceful New Year ever!

lbl


   ww page 4
   Creating Computer Art
  

              Behind the Scenes: Creating the Art Gallery
                      Copyright 1996 by Herb Chong

  [** Editorial Note: The image files which accompany this article
   can be viewed and downloaded in the PDF edition of WindoWatch
   available from the WindoWatch home page, http://www.windowatch.com/.
   Look for PDF File - Part B (wwin210b.pdf) or Zipped PDF file - Part B
   (wwin210b.zip).]

It's been almost a year since I started the Art Gallery part of the
WindoWatch home page. I haven't really had a chance to describe much in
the way of how I create the types of pictures that have appeared in Art
Gallery or the others that are on my web page. This article will
describe some of the things I 've done to create my art along with the
tools I use and how I use them to build images. The techniques have
changed over the years as I acquired new tools and upgraded the older
ones. What makes this easier for me is my training in photography.
Although I never took any formal courses, I studied many techniques on
my own and experimented with composition and layout so that I learned
how to balance and place elements of a picture to build a pleasing
image. Having good material and good ideas are not enough without the
training of the eye to create and recognize good composition. After the
original idea, having the tools to perfect the idea is most important.
Following are descriptions of several of the images I created, the tools
I used and how I used them to produce the images.


Winter in Yosemite

     **Figure 1 (yos1.bmp)

I used VistaPro 3.0 for Windows to create this image. There are several
others like it in the series. VistaPro is published by Virtual Reality
Labs, Inc. They recently merged with RomTech, Inc and are now a single
company. You can reach their web site at http://www.romt.com VistaPro is
a 3D rendering and animation program designed to take US Geological
Survey (USGS) Digital Elevation Modem (DEM) data, randomly generated
terrain, or imported data and render it as a 3D landscape. You can alter
the landscape with its internal tools or export and import landscapes
from a bitmapped data format. VistaPro can color code the terrain by
elevation and populate the landscape with trees of various types. Here
is what the basic user interface looks like. (Note: VP 4.0 is now in
beta and has a radically different interface.)

     **Figure 2 (vp1.bmp)

Although there are a lot of settings on the screen, once you start
working with landscapes in VistaPro for a while, you will find that you
change most of them only once and never do anything more with the
setting. I've added a red circle and arrow showing the camera position
and the direction it is pointing. When using the program, it's a little
easier to see the dot and gray marker lines it uses than in this screen
shot. I work with VistaPro by first choosing an interesting place to
build a scene from. Usually, this is some place with mountains and
lakes. Then, I go looking for the data. VistaPro 3.0 for Windows comes
on a CD-ROM with low resolution data for many interesting areas and also
for the entire continental US. More detailed data can be obtained from
the USGS going to http://www.usgs.gov and following the links for online
mapping data.

For this sample, I used data on the VistaPro CD-ROM of Yosemite valley
and area. The data included doesn't have water features such as lakes
and rivers. I manually added them in by dropping some water on a spot
and letting VistaPro figure out where the water is supposed to run.
Naturally, I choose spots where I know water really runs in the actual
landscape. VistaPro also lets you choose the elevations where the
treeline and snowline begin and how fuzzy that line is.

For this example, I let VistaPro default the values. The one other thing
I had to choose was the color scheme. VistaPro allows you to assign the
color to each type of object it generates. I chose to use the supplied
Winter color scheme. This makes everything look snow-covered with bare
spots where the wind has blown. I increased the tree density for the
picture so that there would be less bare rock. Finally, with the right
terrain and setting in mind, I had to find an interesting scene and
adjust the lighting. I do this by simple experimentation. I imagine
where there might be a good picture and do a test render. With the
detail turned down, a test render might take about 10 seconds. I'll
usually try three or four places and camera angles before I settle on
one I like. Then, I tweak the light. VistaPro allows you to set the sun
angle and position. I usually place it to get a good mix of sun and
shadows, again, doing test renders to be sure that I like what I see.

Once I am satisfied, I turn on all the fancy rendering options and
render to the output size I want. The image in Figure 1 was done at
640x480. It took about 4 minutes to render on a Pentium 90. Others in
the Winter in Yosemite pictures can be found on my web page. The only
difference between them is the position and aiming of the camera. All
other parts and settings of the landscapes are the same.


UFO Overseas

     **Figure 3 (overseas.bmp)

I used trueSpace 2.0 for Windows to create this image. trueSpace is a
3D modeling and animation rendering program that I use to create most of
my non-landscape-based images. The program is published by Caligari Inc.
You can check out their web page at http://www.caligari.com . Caligari
publishes several programs related to 3D modeling and rendering. Their
latest suite of programs is designed to build VRML worlds for the web.
Despite the seeming complexity of this image, the hardest part about
creating it wasn't putting the thing together but waiting the 25 hours
needed for the image to render.

Figure 4 (ts1.bmp)** is a screen shot of the working version of the
scene with many of the trueSpace tools visible. I won't go into the user
interface other than to say that trueSpace is one of the easiest to use
of the 3D modeling and rendering programs. So many others are more
complicated and less easy to use.

UFO Overseas is basically a very simple scene. There are two spheres and
a torus, all inside a hemisphere. Underneath the hemisphere is a
rectangular slab of semitransparent blue-green glasslike material. One
sphere is shiny almost perfectly reflective silver blue metal. The other
is shiny transparent glass. The torus is reddish shiny metal. The inside
of the dome is also shiny silver blue metal. There is a single spotlight
aimed straight down from the top of the hemisphere just below the top
surface. I moved the camera around until I got something interesting in
the wire-frame view of the camera window and did a few test renders
until I was happy with the basic layout. I did have to adjust the
opacity of the slab that formed the water and I also ended up adding a
bump map so that the water would not be flat but would be rippled and
reflect patterns, but I did this after a test render and not seeing
enough interesting details in the resulting image. In all, I probably
spent no more than half an hour fooling with the scene before I did my
final render. The Web Surfer

     **Figure 5 (websurf.bmp)

This is one of my better known pictures. I originally started it for a
project at work, but have tinkered with it some since then. This is the
original and best looking of them. The original idea came about because
I needed a graphic to symbolize surfing the World Wide Web without just
coming out and saying so. I figured I had the tools and could come up
with something flashy without too much effort. Some guy on a spiderlike
thing on a web was what I was after. Despite appearances, doing the
surfer was dead easy. The hardest part was doing the fake spider web.

The first thing I started with was the surfer guy. It was easy to do
because just before I needed this image, I had bought Fractal Design
Poser for Windows (go to http://www.fractal.com It is a program designed
to create 3D human figures in a variety of poses and simulate the
movement ability, the degree of freedom, of the human body. As it
happens, they have a surfer pose in one of their sports pose libraries.
Figure 6 shows a portion of the user interface. Since all I cared about
was the shape of the object and nothing else, I just clicked on the
various poses in the library and then exported the 3D model when I found
the one I wanted.

     **Figure 6 (poser.bmp)

The next most difficult part was coming up with the spiderlike thing
that I wanted the surfer to stand on. I remembered seeing a image
similar to what I had in mind on the Webmaster, Inc. home page
http://www.webmaster.com. This is what it looked like.

     **Figure 7 (original_sspider.bmp)

I couldn't use it the way it was because it was very small and also a
plain flat image. I needed a 3D object for my scene. There are many ways
I could have done it, but I chose to use Fontographer
(http://www.altsys.com) to create a special font out of the shape and
then enter that as a symbol into trueSpace. First, I had to convert the
picture in Figure 7 to something easier for Fontographer to handle.
Figure 8 shows the cleaned up image ready for import into Fontographer.

     **Figure 8 (spider_outline.bmp)

Once in Fontographer, I had to convert the bitmap image into an outline.
Luckily, this is something that font developers do often, so I used the
trace outline command to find the outer shape of the spider and touch up
the shape so that it would be more symmetric. You can see the symbol as
it appears in Fontographer in Figure 9 (fontog.bmp)**. I could have just
as easily traced the outline using Corel Trace and exported as an Adobe
Illustrator shape, but I was going to need the symbol as a font
character for other things, so using Fontographer seemed the best. I
never did use the symbol as a font.

With the surfer and the surf board built, I had to construct the web. I
first tried to find a real spider web and trace its outline just as did
for the spider shape, but that turned out to be an eight hour waste of
time. I eventually settled on constructing my own fake web.

Figure 10 (ts2.bmp)** shows the in-progress view of the desktop. The
surfer is highlighted in white. The spider shape is below him. The web
is nothing more than a bunch of rotated thin cylinders joined together
with other thin cylinders. They are easily visible in the perspective
wireframe view. For a variety of other reasons, the surfing spider had
to be a bright yellow. I experimented with different surfaces for the
surfer until I settled on a very shiny silver metal. I played a little
with the web, but finally decided on a mostly transparent shiny plastic.
Then, I found a background image of some stars and a galaxy from one of
the NASA web pages and used it as the background. The two lights in the
picture are two of the infinite lights that are created by default in
trueSpace. I deleted the other two that trueSpace creates because they
would have lit the surfer from below and cast shadows that I didn't
want.


Penguin Dreams

     **Figure 11 (penguin_gate.bmp)

This is the image I use on the top of my home page. It's really simple
how it was done, but it has the advantage of starting from an
interesting picture. I did all of the work on this image using Adobe
Photoshop 3.0.5 http://www.adobe.com The following screen shots are
taken from a recreation of the process using Photoshop 4.0. Essentially,
all I did was apply a succession of Photoshop filters to the original
image.

Figure 12 (psb1.bmp)** shows the starting image. Pretty weird and
abstract, right? This is a close-up of the top half of a lead crystal
penguin. The beak and the wings are really in the glass, but the rest of
the image is just reflected and refracted light coming through the
window above and behind the glass penguin. I spent a lot of time moving
the camera around until it looked like there was a mouth and eyes.

I wanted a weird, spacey effect so I thought about it and chose the
solarization filter that comes with Photoshop. It has no settings and I
applied it to the entire image. The end result is Figure 13 (psb2.bmp)**.
I then tried jazzing it up with more special effects. I have a demo
filter from Andromeda that takes an image and replicates copies around
the central image. You can buy photographic prism lenses to get this
effect for a regular 35mm camera.

The filter's interface looks like Figure 14(psb3.bmp)**. As you can see,
there are a wide variety of settings to choose from. Except for the
positioning of the center and the width of the segments, I left the
other settings alone. Once the filter is applied, you get Figure
15(psb4.bmp)**.

The picture is nearly done. This image has more segments than what I
actually used on my web page. What was missing was something that
created a focal point in the picture. Since it was to be the gateway to
my home page, it had to look like there was something to go into. What
better way than to simulate a light streaming out through an opening?
Photoshop as a lens flare filter that adds what looks like an
out-of-focus bright light to an image at any spot you want. Figure 16
(psb5.bmp)** has its interface.

I chose a light that was fairly bright and narrow, but had effects
around it that looked like glare. We're now used to seeing things like
that in movies for bright objects seen from a dark place, so I used that
effect. The final result for this image is in Figure 17 (psb6.bmp)**.


Grand Canyon and Area Shaded Relief Map

     **Figure 18 (gc.bmp)

This picture was produced with only two tools, Adobe Photoshop and
VistaPro, but there were lots of manual steps involved. Eventually, I
had to write a program to take care of one group of steps, but even so,
it took about an hour to build this image even though I had done several
others just like it recently. To be able to build this image, I took
advantage of a feature of VistaPro that most people don't use. After
importing a landscape into VistaPro, you can export it as an image. The
image would have black for the lowest elevation and white for the
highest with shades of gray in between. I imported and exported all of
the data I had for the Grand Canyon area in carefully selected segments
so that I could join them together seamlessly in a paint program. This
requires a feature that only available in VistaPro 4, still in beta.
Once exported, I loaded each of the pieces into Photoshop and joined
them together into one large image there. Figure 19 is the resulting 256
color gray scale image, after I reduced it for this article.

**Figure 19 (psa1.bmp)

You can see the heights and depths fairly clearly, but it really looks
like an X-ray of the landscape. The picture is interesting, but not
interesting enough. The next step is to apply a color map to the image
so that different elevations are color coded. If you look at some good
topographic maps, you will see that different colors are used for
different elevations and that they blend together to produce a pleasing
image. Figure 20 shows Photoshop with the custom color palette I used
loaded.

**Figure 20 (psa2.bmp)

At one time, I had to manually come up with each of the colors needed
for shading a landscape. It was hard enough and tricky enough so that I
finally gave up and wrote a program to generate all 256 of the colors I
needed. Before the program, it used to take me about 4 hours just to
come up with a good looking color table. With the program, it would take
about 30 seconds. This color table had already been tuned for this image
because I have used it before. The result of applying the color table is
Figure 21 (psa3.bmp)**.

The image looks pretty nice, but if you were to look at the full sized
image on a monitor, it would still look flat. It is a color-coded X-ray
and nothing more. There was something more missing that was needed to
emphasize the sense of depth of looking over a real landscape. That
missing ingredient is shaded relief. Photoshop has a filter that can be
coerced into doing shaded relief of an image. It works only on 24-bit
RGB-encoded images and works best with a texture channel that encodes
exactly how high each point of the image is. The next steps in Photoshop
are to get to the state where the filter will work.

**Figure 22 (psa4.bmp)

This is what the image looks like in Photoshop when you convert the
original 256-color colorized image to RGB color. The channels palette
now lists 4 channels instead of just one. Compare the right part of the
screen shots in Figures 21 and 22. The next thing to do is to add the
texture channel. This texture will tell the lighting filter how high
each part of the image is. The obvious approach is to use the original
gray scale image since that is exactly what the filter needs. The
lighter the gray, the higher things are supposed to be. The texture is
an image channel, in Photoshop parlance, and so, using the channel
palette, I created a new texture channel and selected it, as shown in
Figure 23 (psa5.bmp)**.

Figure 24 (psa6.bmp)** shows the new channel, blank because I haven't
put anything into it, and the original gray scale image. I just copy and
paste the old image into the texture channel of the new image.

This leaves me with Figure 25 (psa7.bmp)**, the complete image in the
Red, Green, and Blue channels, and the height data coded in the texture
channel.


Now that I have all of the information needed to add the shaded relief
to the image, I need to set up the filter correctly. Figure 26(psa8.bmp)**
shows the filter interface with the image in the background.

I've already selected a saved setting of lighting that I use for shaded
relief maps. It specifies a broad light from the upper left and the
texture channel to use to determine heights of points on the image. I
also have surface characteristics and roughness selected. The settings
depend strongly on the size of the image in pixels, so if you want to do
this, experiment. Unfortunately, the lighting effects filter in
Photoshop is one of the slowest. You'll just have to be patient. Figure
27 (psa9.bmp)** shows the results of applying the filter to the entire
image.


A More Detailed Look

You can visit my Web page at http://acheron.cilia.org to see more
examples of my computer artwork and other types of imaging. The Domain
Name Server of the .org suffix is slow and so you must try to get to the
site when the Internet isn't very busy. You'll also have to be patient
because the page was designed and ran for a long time on a Wide Area
Network where connection speeds are significantly higher than a modem
or many ISDN connections can support. The page states that you need at
256 colors and your display set to 800x600 to see it well, but the pages
were actually designed for 1024x768 or higher screen resolution with
16-bit (64K) color. What you will see with fewer colors is a less true
renditions of my original images. I normally run my system at 1280x1024
with 24-bit color. Any less and I can't tell if my images are rendering
the way I want or not.


                             =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Herb Chong has made a fantastic presentation on these pages! Quite aside
from his great talent to teach, that is to talk about a complicated
procedure in quite simple and easy to understand language, he has
produced images that are, indeed, art!

From the inception in the magazine, Herb Chong has brought his
considerable programming strengths to our enterprise. His understanding
of computer architecture along with intellectual integrity has given the
magazine a level of credibility that would have taken longer to achieve.
No matter how much he is pressed for time, he always has time for us!


   ww page 5
  Old Dogs Learning New Tricks!               Part III - An HTML Tutorial
  

          Making a Web Page Your Own - Colours and Backgrounds
                     Copyright 1996 by Gregg Hommel


But first, a word from our sponsor !

As of this issue, we have some space of our own on the WindoWatch Web
site. We're going to use it to store various useful items. - at least, I
think they are useful. As example, one thing we will be able to do is
view the Practice Page we are working on, in it's various iterations. I
will also try to make available the source code in a ZIP file you can
download. As we get further along, it will become much larger than it is
currently, so we don't have to keep repeating it in every column or
every time we make a change. Additionally, I will also make available as
many of the various graphics files we refer to here. I am sure that we
will find many other uses for the space.

To get there, you don't have to go through the WindoWatch Home Page
http://www.windowatch.com, point your browser at

                  http://www.windowatch.com/tutorial/

and from that page, you will find links to the sample pages, and to the
files you can download.

One last thing. I was lacking in time for this issue, so the above page
doesn't look like much at all. Matter of fact, it's almost as bad as our
current Practice Page, but it will get better. As soon as the senior
editor of this slave ship. er, I mean, magazine, gives me some free
time, I will pretty it up, and make it a lot easier on the eyes when you
come visit, - at least, I hope it will be so and you do! [What I put up
with from the talent! -lbl]


Now that the commercial  is over !

Before going much further with exploring HTML files, there is one thing
that I am sure may have crossed your minds and that we should, at least
briefly, discuss are HTML editors.

I know that I have already said that HTML files are basically plain
ASCII text files, but even at this early stage, when you look at them,
it should be obvious that plain though they are, they are not simple.
They require a knowledge of the tags involved, and some way to remember
all of them. Fortunately, this is not really necessary as there is a
whole market built up around the need for HTML authoring software, much
of it designed to shield the user from any need to actually know or
understand HTML code. The various products available range from fairly
simple, freeware or shareware offerings, through heavy duty commercial
packages. And, as we've come to expect in this industry, users of each
product swear by the one they use. Power users even continue using
Notepad, and insist that the only pure way to write an HTML file is
manually.

I was going to discuss this now, but have changed my mind. With the
simple pages that we are doing, it is enough to use any text editor,
even Notepad. Later, when we are getting into the heavy duty tags, like
frames and tables, and so on, we'll break for a discussion of editors,
but doing so now I suspect is just a little too early in the game.


So, on to the main event!

We now have a simple HTML file, and have it in a text editor. But we
haven't yet discussed saving it. When doing so, it helps to know how a
Web browser sees a file, and some tricks that Web sites use.

The first thing you should remember when saving an HTML file is that the
Web browser which interprets it for display over the Internet isn't
actually all that bright. For the browser to know that the file is
something it can display, normally, it looks for one of two extensions
on the filename: .HTM or .HTML, depending upon the OS in use. In most
cases, if you have the choice, use the .HTML extension, as this is the
most common on Web servers, which are often Unix or Win NT, and allow
for longer than three character file extensions. If you are using Win95
on your system, you can even use that extension for these files, since
it also supports more than three characters in the extension of a file.

But that leaves the name itself out of the discussion. Again, convention
comes into play and saves us from having to think too much ourselves. On
most Web servers, when a remote connects to it, and goes to a URL,
without specifying a filename or page name to load, the server will
display a default file as the first page, even on a multi-page site.
This default file is generally called either DEFAULT.HTML or INDEX.HTML,
depending upon the server. You can ask your ISP which one is in use on
your server, but for now, we'll use the default for my ISP, or
INDEX.HTML.

What this means is that, if you tell your browser to go to

        http://www.ionline.net/~gregghom

you will find my home page URL, as I normally give it to people. What
you will actually get, and see displayed in the status line of your
browser, is

        http://www.ionline.net/~gregghom/index.html

This is cleaner because it means that I can use a shorter URL for my
home page when sending it to someone. There is less chance of my
creating errors when I send it to them, or of them making mistakes
typing it into their browser. Better still, I know that they will get
the page I want them to start out with, when they visit my site.

With that out of the way, and our file named, and saved, let's go on to
start to make it more our own.

By default most browsers display a page, without other instructions to
the contrary, using a plain, dull grey background and black text. That
isn't all that bad from the point of view of clarity, even though many
folks find it boring preferring to stamp their own personality on their
page.

We'll start with the background of the page. I have no objection to the
default grey colour, preferring it, as it makes the text more distinct
for these old eyes. Even so, many people would rather have something a
little more colourful, and for purposes of this discussion, if we left
it at default we'd have nothing to talk about. Since I don't expect to
leave the page this way for long, we are going to make our page
background Aqua.

Most commonly, HTML uses colour information in hex format numbers, so
that's what we'll use here. The hex format code for Aqua in HTML is
#00FFFF with the # sign an HTML indicator that the following information
represents a hex number.

But what do we do with it and how do we use it? Actually, it is fairly
simple, when you know a little more about HTML tags, and when you look
at this code logically. Tags, as noted earlier, are not quite as simple
as I have made them out to be. Even those I have used in the previous
column are not as simple as I presented them. Many HTML tags not only
consist of the tag information itself, but also arguments for that tag,
or operational parameters, if you will. As a result, in reality, rarely
will you see <BODY> as a tag in the source code of a page, without other
parameters included within the <> brackets.

Looking at this procedure logically, we are trying to change the
background colour of our page. As noted earlier, what most people will
see displayed as our practice page, is actually enclosed in the HTML
<BODY></BODY> construct. In other words, it is the body of our page,
i.e. that portion displayed in the browser window when a user looks at
the page. Therefore, logically, to change the background colour of that
displayed window, we would need to change the background colour defined
for the body of our page. And that is indeed, exactly what we need to
do, using the BGCOLOR parameter of the <BODY> tag.

This is one of those "arguments" or "parameters" to the <BODY> tag, and
it specifies, to a browser, that it is to interpret the background (BG)
colour of the page displayed to whatever hex numbers follow the
argument. So, in our case, we would need BGCOLOR=#00FFFF as the argument
to change the background colour of our page from dull grey to aqua.

When using arguments or parameters to an HTML tag, they must always
follow the tag itself. In other words, the first thing that the
browser/interpreter must see, after the opening < of the tag, is the tag
itself, and not any of it's parameters.

(Please note : The resulting lines of code/text will by necessity at
times be much shorter than is allowable in HTML, and may result in the
wrapping of one single line to the next one.)


  <HTML>

  <HEAD><TITLE>The WindoWatch Tutorial Practice Page</TITLE></HEAD>

  <BODY BGCOLOR=#00FFFF>

  This is our very first practice page for this HTML tutorial. <P>I know
  that this isn't much to read, but it is our first page, and we needed
  some practice at writing the text for the body of our page.</P>

  </BODY>

  </HTML>


Not much of a change, but we have begun to stamp the page with some
personality even tho' it's such a horrible colour! And we can add even
more to it, by using three other parameters of the <BODY> tag, TEXT=,
LINK=, and VLINK=. These three parameters change the display colour of
the body text, the colour of any links to other Web pages on our page,
and the colour of the text for those same Web pages after we have
visited them, in that order.

For purposes of this exercise, and again, because we won't be leaving
them this way for long, we are going to set these to black, maroon, and
navy blue, respectively. Before you say a word, I know what this will
look when displayed by a Web browser, rocket science it's not, but our
objective is to examine the parameters, and what can be done with them.
So we let this atrocious colour scheme ride for now and our code looks
like this.

  <HTML>

  <HEAD><TITLE>The WindoWatch Tutorial Practice Page</TITLE></HEAD>

  <BODY BGCOLOR=#00FFFF TEXT=#000000 LINK=#7F0000 VLINK=#00007F>

  This is our very first practice page for this HTML tutorial. <P>I know
  that this isn't much to read, but it is our first page, and we needed
  some practice at writing the text for the body of our page.</P>

  </BODY>

  </HTML>


We now have a Web page that is a lot less forgettable than our original,
default page, even if it is so because of the horrible colour scheme.
You'll find this page linked to our Tutorial page as UGH.HTML. And we
haven't really done a lot more than we did with our original page, other
than add some parameters to one of the tags.

Be assured that we aren't going to leave the page looking this
horrendous for long. Even I wouldn't do that. Personally, I don't like
playing with the default colours on a page, since doing so can be quite
tricky, and can lead to very unexpected results. Each browser has it's
own interpretation of what something like, Aqua, for instance should
look like. Indeed, each video display card used seems to as well. As a
result, I have always found that using colour changes, as the above
examples, can result in your page being even more horrific when viewed
by someone else using another Web browser, and a different video card,
or display resolution on their home system.

My preference to setting page colours is to use a background graphic for
the page, instead. You've all seen them... pages that seem to be written
on parchment, or have a basket weave texture to them, or perhaps
something similar? When I was writing my first home page, I wanted
something different from the standard grey background, but I am not much
of a colour person. I have little or no colour sense when it comes to
what displays on a computer screen, so I am not very daring when it
comes to using colour. And, as I noted earlier, personally, I find the
grey background with black text combination generally easier to read.

So, I decided to stick with basic black text, but to change the
background it appeared on. After considerable investigation on the net,
I found a small graphic that I thought was suitable. You see, some while
ago, I had a small personal company, called "Computer etceteras".
Whenever I wrote a letter for that company, I used a logo that I
designed in CorelDraw, and put it, via Laser, on some paper that I had
here, using that as my letterhead. The paper had a grey parchment look
to it. This is the graphic I found, the small grey parchment-looking
one, that I thought looked more than a bit like my letterhead, if only
to me. It established a level of continuity between earlier
communications, and this new form of communication, the web page.

As I have emphasized this graphic is small (9,007 bytes). The reason for
this is display speed. On the Web, everything takes time, and I figured
the less time that my page took to load and display on a remote, the
less chance there was that they would grow tired of waiting and head
elsewhere. So I went looking for small graphics to use, rather than
larger ones, trying to keep images down to around 10K in size, if
possible.

So, how does a background graphic work, you ask? (And even if you
didn't, I am going to tell you anyway..)

Background graphics are very much like the wallpaper graphics often used
in Windows, for those of you familiar with those. They are smaller
graphics files, with no clear cut edges, or edges that could easily
blend into another copy of the same graphic placed on any side of it.
And they are then tiled so that a single graphic file is repeated over
and over to completely fill the background of the "page". Your browser
only needs to download the small, original image file, and then it uses
the cached copy of that to fill in the background tiles.

When using these in HTML, it is even easier than setting colour options
for the page. You simply specify the graphic file with the BACKGROUND=
tag parameter in the <BODY> tag, and HTML does the rest by tiling the
graphic to fit. On my Web site, I store all of my graphic images in a
sub-directory of the main directory, called \Images, which you will see
in the code to follow.

However, this brings up an interesting point... compatibility between
HTML files at source, and on a Web site. On my home machine, I store my
basic HTML coded files in my \Data\HTML directory. Now, under that
directory, I have another, named \Images (i.e. \Data\HTML\Images). The
reason? I don't have to change the code I upload to my Web site, to
account for a different directory structure. By duplicating the Web site
directory structure here on my system, I save myself some hassles with
worrying about changing code to match the structure when I upload it.

So now the code to display, the final for this column, our test page
which you'll find on the Tutorial Page as NOTBAD.HTML.

  <HTML>

  <HEAD><TITLE>The WindoWatch Tutorial Practice Page</TITLE></HEAD>

  <BODY BACKGROUND="Images\wall.gif">

  This is our very first practice page for this HTML tutorial. <P>I know
  that this isn't much to read, but it is our first page, and we needed
  some practice at writing the text for the body of our page.</P>

  </BODY>

  </HTML>


The only item I changed from default in the body display of this page is
the background. I left the display text, link text, and visited link
text at whatever defaults the Web browser wanted to use. These are
normally quite valid with a grey background page, and in spite of the
graphic in use, that is basically how my web page remained.

Next time, we are going to work on the body itself, adding more text,
some links to other pages, and perhaps even some other simpler HTML
code, preparatory to heading after the big game we promised you from the
beginning, frames!


                             =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Gregg Hommel has been writing tutorials for WindoWatch beginning with
his WASP tutorials in issue one. Well known to BBSers, Gregg hosts
several Ilink and Rime conferences. He serves on the WW Editorial Board,
has provided consulting services for several major communications
software houses. Gregg can be emailed to gregghom@ionline.net


   ww page 6
   A Product Review of MetaInfo DNS 2.0 for Windows NT
  

                         Taming of the Wild DNS
                      Copyright 1996 by Jim Plumb


DNS Theory

Not to get into this too deeply, but everyone who has set up or
attempted to set up an Internet connection has had to supply an IP
address for a DNS server. DNS means Domain Name or Naming Service. Its
purpose is to provide name information for computers and other systems
on a TCP/IP network, of which The Internet is the mother.

Name Servers do just that, handling requests to resolve network host
names and host addresses. When one computer wants to talk to another
computer on a TCP/IP network, they use IP (Internet Protocol) addresses,
which are in the form of 111.222.333.444. Usually though, people know
computers by their names and not numbers, so if they want to get to
www.joes.com, that's what goes into the browser. This is where the DNS
server comes into play, as the browser requests the address for
www.joes.com from the DNS server you specified, the server looks it up
in its files or else knows where else to look, finds the IP address,
returns it to the browser which can then communicate to www.joes.com.

DNS servers form their own sort of network: as one server gets updated
host information, it is passed on to other DNS servers. There is a DNS
hierarchy beginning with the root name server, then the root domain
servers (com, edu, org, uk, au, etc.), and down from there, with servers
for the domains making up each of the root domains (ibm.com, sun.com,
etc.). This relates only to the Internet. There are many
companies/organizations with their own private TCP/IP networks, and are
not on the Internet.


A Decision is Made

DNS is not the only facility for resolving host names and addresses. The
easiest method is the use of a host table, which is merely a list of IP
addresses with corresponding host names and aliases. With a small
private network, and in the beginning, the Internet, a host table works
fine, but you need a host table on each computer in the network. And if
the host table needs to be updated, all the host tables need to be
updated. So you can see this would never do on the Internet and thus was
born DNS and why I got involved with DNS.

Part of my job deals with just this sort of administrative tedium, and
with the number of computers in my network constantly increasing,
updating individual host tables got to be too much. It was time to set
up a DNS server. I had originally planned on using one of my Sun
machines as the server, but an attempt was aborted because it was taking
the server off line due to all of my hacking around to get it working.
One thing I didn't realize at the time was how dependent DNS is on the
Internet. It supposes you are on the Internet, and wants to know about
that hierarchical world.

When I next attempted this I decided to look at it from the NT point of
view, knowing that my workstation wasn't any linchpin in the network, so
wouldn't be missed if it needed rebooting, or if it crashed for some
strange reason. Research provided me with only two possible choices for
DNS servers, a freeware product, BIND 4.9 and a commercial product
MetaInfo DNS 2.0

To make a long story short I tried both products but couldn't get either
to work. BIND I liked for price and MetaInfo DNS I liked for its GUI
interface. I was hoping for an idiot proof way to setup DNS and MetaInfo
appeared to be the way to go but it wouldn't work.

After abandoning the project and banging my head against the wall,
trying it again and doing some more banging, it finally dawned on me: I
was installing DNS into a private network and it wanted to be on the
Internet. I was telling DNS my domain was dp.com and so it went looking
for the com name server and there was none to find. It was also looking
for the root name server and there was none! Oy! It appeared I needed to
setup my own root server if this thing was to work and I got
confirmation in the tcpip newsgroup from others who had gone through
similar jumps. An internal network is a microcosm of the Internet, if
you do TCP/IP.

More head banging until I got a root name server setup on a Sun. I had a
clue how to do it now and it didn't take too much hacking. I'm not going
into the details of it here.

It was now time to roll the drums and try to install DNS 2.0 again. I
shortened the domain to leave off the com part and it worked!


Installing and Setting Up MetaInfo DNS 2.0

This is about as close to idiot proof as you can get. Installation was
very simple. I was asked if this was a primary name server, my domain
name and the IP address of my PC. You get a choice during installation
of setting up your machine as the primary, secondary or a cache server.
I set up both a primary and secondary server, enough for my small
network. DNS 2.0 comes with a Configuration Manager GUI. It is also
called a Web Browser. You can also do your configuration the old
fashioned way, by using a text editor. By the way, BIND comes with a
neat little utility that will create configuration files out of a host
table, which you could use to help with your setup. Part of installation
is starting DNS. DNS runs as an NT service and can be set to start
automatically or manually.

I have three subnets in my domain. I push the Configure Domain button
and I can add/delete change host entries in any of those subnets.
You can see how easy it is to add a new entry.

One thing I would like to see with DNS 2.0 is a setup utility to go
through the host table and setup the DNS config files beforehand, and
then use this online configuration manager to add new entries.

Some other screens allow you to add aliases, which allows you to refer
to a machine by several different names; specify service options, which
indicate when to start the service and at what debug level to run to aid
in troubleshooting if need be; and, what would we do without it, the
"Undo" screen, which can restore previous configurations saved from past
sessions.

I'm using Netscape to configure DNS. Installation asks for a
userid/password and then I can use it locally, over the network (or
should I say intranet) or over the Internet. Complete remote
configuration is possible with this setup. And as you can see from the
Configuration Manager help page, you can add IP addresses of allowable
remote hosts, to let for example MetaInfo support staff in for help with
configuration.


Tools

One of your standard DNS tools, nslookup is included for testing and
debugging purposes. It runs as a command tool utility.


Summary

MetaInfo has just released an upgrade, v2.1 and I am downloading it now,
but due to deadline constraints have not had a chance to try it. Key
features are compatibility with NT 4.0 (although I have been running 2.0
on NT 4.0 without a hitch), and the ability to run the DNS server on the
same machine as a web server. Also, MetaInfo claims DNS 2.1 claims to be
direct port of UNIX BIND 4.9.2, so you can use the BIND configuration
files if you are thinking of moving your DNS server to an NT platform.
And one more piece of good news, MetaInfo has hired on the original
developer of the Berkeley BIND. They are committed to this product!

All in all I'd say the experience to be one of the ease-of-use I'd
expect in a graphically-based administrative tool and then some. I like
the ability to configure all aspects of the DNS server from one console,
so to speak. I add one host entry and its take care of for the whole
network. Get it if you can.


Vital Info:   MetaInfo, Inc.
              700 5th Ave. Suite 5500
              Seattle, WA 98104
              Tel: (206) 521-2600
              Fax: (206) 467-9237
              Internet: http://www.metainfo.com
              30-day free evaluation copies available at Web site.
              List price: $400, $95 for registered users of DNS 1.x.


                             =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Jim Plumb is the Systems Administrator for commercial printing
establishment keeping the multiple systems humming in unison on his
network. A WindoWatch regular contributor, Jim continues to live on the
bleeding edge.


   ww page 7
   Terraforming Templates                                     Part Five
  


                    Maximizing Word 7 for Windows 95
                   Copyright 1996 by Jack Passarella


Introduction

In the early days of word processing, a document template was little
more than a shell with some common text filled in for later and
repeated use. A template then was what amounted to an electronic form,
the opposite of boilerplate text, i.e., a block of common text dumped
into a document at an appropriate location. Both these tools - form
templates and boilerplate text - were used often in the early days of
processing words. To paraphrase a popular catch phrase, templates have
come a long way.

In the past several months, in this series of articles I've written on
Word for Windows 95, and have examined the building blocks of a modern
day Word template: styles, macros and toolbars. Throw in boilerplate -
now called AutoText by the Microsoft marketing machine - and you have
just about all the tools you need to fashion your own word processing
environment.

In science fiction and science speculation, creating an artificial
environment and landscape to mimic or improve upon existing ecosystems
is called terraforming. In Microsoft Word, it's called a template. You
can build templates for your own word processing needs or for others to
use and inhabit. But a template is generally used to create a unique
writing environment or simply a more comfortable one.


Electronic Clay

The Microsoft Word environment - i.e., interface - is so malleable it's
like electronic clay. Word lets you change practically every facet of
itself. You can add, change or remove menus and toolbars; you can add
your own functions with macros, or mold existing functions into
interesting new variations of themselves. You can change the default
font typeface and size, adjust the header or footer, decrease the side
margins, increase the distance between normal paragraphs, dictate when
all capitals are used or when font colors should change. You can remap
the functions of common keys, create new keyboard shortcuts or change
old ones. You can indent however much you want and page breaks wherever
your heart desires. A good many of these malleable features can be done
without delving into the WordBasic macro programming language. Best of
all, if you've been reading along with my series on Word, you already
have the know how, even if you didn't realize it.

I won't attempt to rehash everything covered in those prior articles,
but I will touch upon AutoText and then explain how to bring all the
pieces together.


AutoText

No, this doesn't have anything to do with car repair manuals. Nor am I
referring to AutoText's sexier cousin AutoCorrect, which corrects typos
on the fly, i.e., as you mistype them. AutoText is simply the
boilerplate feature I mentioned earlier with but a few additions. You
can store and subsequently insert your boilerplate material as plain
text or with formatting options intact, such as bold or italics. In
addition, you can store images in AutoText.

To clarify the value of AutoText to your template, you should know that,
unlike AutoCorrect entries which are more or less stored globally,
AutoText entries can be saved in individual templates. This is important
if you are considering distributing templates to others. The template
should be able to stand alone, fully functional. By sending your
AutoText entries within the template file, you are doing just that.

The easiest way to create an AutoText entry, whether picture or text, is
to place it in your document - or template in progress - then select it.
Next click on the Edit menu, then AutoText. This apparent menu oddity of
creating an AutoText entry which obviously doesn't exist yet by editing
it has, I'm informed, been corrected in Word97; AutoText will finally
move to the Insert menu, where it logically belongs.

The AutoText dialog box will come up and Microsoft's intelli-nonsense
will put the first couple words from your text selection into the Name:
box. The object of AutoText - in my opinion - is to enter a lot of text
with as few keystrokes as possible. I would generally enter an
abbreviation in the Name: box. For now, note that the Make AutoText
Entry Available To: specifies All Documents (Normal.dot), which would
make the boilerplate available all the time, or globally in Word-ese. In
the Selection area, you will see the AutoText as it will look when you
insert it. Once you have the abbreviation that you want, click on the
Add button.

Later, when you actually want to insert the AutoText boilerplate, simply
type the abbreviation then press the F3 key. (Note: unlike AutoCorrect,
the Auto in AutoText overstates the application! )

My example is the abbreviation lpl to recall the name of my employer.
Actually, I already have this abbreviation as an AutoCorrect entry,
which eliminates the step of pressing the F3 key. With AutoText, since
the expansion of the boilerplate is on demand, you can have
abbreviations that are real words. For example, I regularly use
coworkers initials as AutoText entries. Mine would be jwp, which expands
automatically to Jack Passarella. Suppose I had a co-worker named Thomas
Oliver O'Brien. If I used his initials as an AutoCorrect entry, either
two or three initials, I'd obviously have a problem every time I really
meant to or too. If I make too an AutoText entry, it only expands when I
press the F3 key after it. Since I'm not likely to do this accidentally,
I won't have to worry about inappropriate uses of Tom's name.

Another advantage of AutoText is that you can store bitmap images as
AutoText. Symbols and thumbnail images can be stored just like
boilerplate text, to be called up with a couple keystrokes. Simply
select the image in your document window, then bring up the Edit
AutoText dialog box, type an abbreviation name and click on Add. Just
like regular text entries.

But, the main reason for choosing AutoText over AutoCorrect is the
aforementioned portability. You can package AutoText entries inside your
template kit and pass them along to friends, coworkers and clients.


Starter Kit

Now that you understand a little bit about the final piece of the
template puzzle, AutoText, it's time to discuss creating an actual
template. As I've done in past articles, I'll draw from the real world
examples of some of my own shareware and freeware templates to
illustrate some of the concepts involved.

If you're ready to begin building your own Word environment, i.e.,
create a new template, then just click on File New. The Blank Document
icon will be selected. Make sure that the Create New radio button group
has Template instead of Document selected. Click OK and you will be in
your new template, called Template1 instead of the usual default
document name Document1. If you try to save this template now, the
default filename becomes DOT1.DOT instead of the always entertaining
DOC1.DOC. You can safely change the DOT1 part of the name, just keep the
.DOT extension, as that tells Word that the file is a Word template and
not a Word document. If you gave it a name now, e.g., MYTMPLT.DOT, you
would have already created a Word template. Yes, it can be that
simple... for a simple template, that is.

In my previous article on Word styles, Always in Styles, I mentioned
that even if you don't consciously select and use styles, you are always
in a style in Word. There's no getting around it. The default text style
is called normal. Well, the default template is called NORMAL.DOT. So in
a real sense, you are already using styles and templates, even if you
thought you were dragging your feet all this time.

By saving MYTMPLT.DOT as a new template, what you've done, basically, is
create a template based on NORMAL.DOT. Nothing really exciting,
innovative or ground-breaking, but a template nonetheless.

For a template to be anything but default Word by any other name, you
need to have some vision or purpose for it. That means you want certain
macros or specific styles to be available whenever you are working with
a document based on this new template. Maybe you just have a bunch of
boilerplate you need available whenever you're cranking out contracts.
You store all this project- specific functionality inside the template.
You saw in the AutoText dialog box that you would be saving the AutoText
entry by default into NORMAL.DOT, but you had the option of saving it in
another template. If you had, that boilerplate or image would only be
available when the template was active (i.e., attached) to your current
Word session.

The same rationale applies if you create a new style. While you are in
the template, you have the option of saving the style in the template.
When you create a new toolbar, you are asked whether the toolbar should
be available to all documents or just documents based on your template.
(For more information on creating and working with toolbars, check out
Toolbar Time my Word article from last month.)

Macros are a slightly different animal, you need to be in the template
window when you select Tools Macro, or you won't be able to select your
template's name from the Macros Available In: drop down list. Note: you
could always copy the macro to your template later. (See Organize. or
Reorganize below.)

Since you are in your template - i.e., your new Word environment - you
can change the default font typeface and size. My WindoWatch template
defaults to Times New Roman, 12 point and bold to expedite the
conversion to the Adobe Acrobat PDF format. I also modified the built in
Heading styles to what I needed to match the WindoWatch heading styles.
By saving all these various elements in your template, you are changing
the Word interface to fit the function.


Real World Examples

My freeware template, UTILPRO is basically just a toolbar with about a
dozen usability enhancements in the form of toolbar buttons linked to
macros. I don't consider this template to be an environmental
interface change. Instead, it's designed to be unobtrusive as possible,
probably copied to the Winword startup directory so that the template's
toolbar is always available, in other words, attached. I could have
saved the macros and the toolbar in my NORMAL.DOT, but my NORMAL.DOT is
not portable. By saving the macros and the toolbar in a separate
template, I can easily distribute them and them alone.

My most complicated template is WWWWPRO, or the Word-Wise Web Writer.
For the second version I added more than sixty pages of new or revised
macros, mostly to accommodate dynamic dialog boxes. (Note: Dynamic
Dialog Boxes are dialog boxes that change their appearance depending
upon which boxes you check or radio buttons you select.) This template
goes another step toward the environmental interface change. I use a
blue font for HTML tags, a green font for text denoting links, as well
as different sizes for different heading levels. However, WWWWPRO is
mostly a time saving/convenience type of template. The user selects the
tags; the template, via the macros and dialog box selections, enters all
the brackets, syntax and parameters. The template is designed to save
the HTML author the trouble of remembering all the tag syntax or being
chained to a reference manual. Because of the specific nature of coding
web pages, it makes more sense that you base a document on this template
in a project sort of mentality. You wouldn't want to have all those
macros cluttering up your standard NORMAL.DOT template. You want to be
able to put aside this functionality for the majority of the time when
you aren't writing home pages.

My first major template was SCRNPRO, which is a template for screen
writers, who are burdened with formatting nightmare of the screenplay.
Some of the logistics involved are: where to place character names,
parentheticals, dialogue, scene headings, fade and cut directions and on
and on; spacing between each of these paragraph types varies, as does
case - character name is all upper case, for example. Screenplays are
even typed in the fixed pitch Courier font. All this formatting is more
than a bother to remember, and setting all the tab positions could
easily drive you back to the simple formatting requirements of short
stories and novels.

SCRNPRO removes the tedium of keeping track of all the tab stops so
completely that I was able to disable the tab function of the TAB key!
Instead I intercept the TAB keystroke and reprogram it to cycle through
logical styles for the current position in the screenplay. Instead of
tabbing through page positions, you tab through different styles. The
styles themselves are designed to flow into the next logical style
automatically. The goal of SCRNPRO was to remove formatting
considerations from the writers mind. All the writer has to do now is
come up with a killer script. That's one reason why I consider SCRNPRO
to be a true environmental interface change. (I described the power of
style definitions in detail in Always in Styles, a previous WindoWatch
article.)


Organize... or Re-Organize

Suppose you've been accumulating your own unique styles, your own sleek
functionality macros or maybe even designed your own toolbar with fancy
toolbar buttons on that one quarter the size of a postage stamp palette,
but you've been saving everything in your NORMAL.DOT template by
default. Maybe because you weren't sure how to go about creating your
own template. Relax. All is not lost. Word let's you ferry your old work
into another template after the fact with the Template Organizer.

First create the new template as described above, then save it so that
you can give it a name that makes sense. The Template Organizer (select
File Templates then click the Organizer button)requires that the from
(i.e., In) and to templates both be open for the copy operation. (Note:
you can open or close any template or document that pops up in either
the from or to box in the Organizer to get the two you really want to
work with.) The active boxes is the In box, the other is the To box. You
can have them in either order, just mind your selection before you click
Rename or especially Delete.



As you can see, you have four tabs to work with: Styles, AutoText,
Toolbars and Macros. You could, for example, copy a macro then rename it
in the destination template. After you copy macros from NORMAL.DOT to a
specific template, you might then want to delete them from NORMAL.DOT.
This is housekeeping, which each user performs up to some individual
clutter quotient. Just Close the Organizer when you're finished. Simple.

Now you have no excuse for not being organized right from the beginning.
For creating templates, there's no time like the present.


Conclusion

I hope these examples from my own templates give you some idea of the
many things you can do with templates. Remember that Word comes with a
good number of templates. Check them out; maybe you'll be inspired with
your own ideas.

I also hope that you've come to appreciate the scope and power of
Winword. It really is a remarkable tool.


A Look Ahead

Coming first quarter of 1997 is Microsoft Office 97, including Word97.
For Word macro programmers, Word97 promises at least one significant
change: it's the first version of Word to use Visual Basic for
Applications as its macro language. Word97 will import the old macros
and convert them using a WordBasic object, so they'll work. They just
won't be optimized. If you save Word 6 or Word 95 templates in their
native format, the conversion will only be temporary; if you save them
in the new format, they will be incompatible with those older versions
of Word.

1997 promises to hold many surprises for all us Word - and Microsoft
Office - users.


                             =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Jack Passarella has demystified many of the finer point of Word. He
hosts the Ilink Word conference and has written original software for
Word. He is a regular WindoWatch contributor as well as lending his
considerable HTML skills to the WW homepage!


   ww page 8
   Overload!
  


                      Reflections of a ModemJunkie
                   Copyright 1996 by Leonard Grossman



A few weeks ago I decided I needed to slow down. There was simply too
much input. - Too much in my face! I read the NY Times every morning and
scan the virtual NY Times before I go to bed. I log onto the Internet
and check the Reuters news several times a day and sometimes during the
night. I listen to NPR in the morning and sometimes listen to News Radio
78 every on the hour in the late afternoon.

So one Sunday afternoon when I got in the car, I pressed the button for
98.7, WFMT, Chicago's fine arts station. It had been a long time since I
had listened to the opera. It seemed overblown, noisy, and too full of
itself. After a few minutes, I switched the station off.

But then last week I found an opera that really satisfied a need. It
restored my faith. It gave me hope for the future. Was this a
masterpiece by Mozart or some sublime Bach? No! it was Opera, the
software. This new browser from Norway is amazing proof that software
doesn't have to get bigger, fatter, or bloated. If you are running
Windows, this one is worth your while!

The compressed file is less than one meg. Smaller than the early
editions of Netscape. The software still has some bugs but it offers a
lot of promise. It is thoughtfully designed with a host of features left
out of Netscape and Internet Explorer. In addition to nearly full
keyboard control, it has an amazing zoom function which lets you
control the size of the text AND images on the fly.

You can reduce the page as much as 50% or increase it by 400%. A
distinct advantage for the visually impaired (and bleary eyed
night-surfers). It also permits turning on and off image loading and is
customizable in many other ways.

You can find a link to the Opera home page on mine.
http://www.mcs.net/~grossman/ Grab a copy and evaluate it as soon as you
can. If you have problems be sure to send their tech support a note.
There is a link on their page. The creators of Opera deserve our
support. As long as independent writers create software like this the
big boys will have to stay on their toes. Opera may never achieve the
market share of a Netscape or Internet Explorer, but, hopefully it will
find its niche.

As the holidays fast approach (Hanukkah will have passed before you see
this), thoughts go to what new toys are new to the market for computer
junkies. Although the reports are barely in from Las Vegas (Comdex) as I
write, it seems as though there are a few innovations around the corner.
A new series of chips from Intel. 56 kbps modems. But these won't be
here until at least January and the changes they represent will be
incremental. But it doesn't seem as though there is much new for the
holidays. Last year we went to multi-x CD-ROMs, added Internet access,
new speakers, and zip drives. This year each of those have improved
slightly but there is not much in the way of really new toys for us to
play with or talk about except to say that everything is getting
smaller.

The hottest items coming out of Comdex seems to be the new pocket sized
PIMS (personal information managers). The press talks about great leaps
forward from last year's Zaurus and Psion machines. Most of them are now
running on Microsoft's new CE software. The amazing thing about this is
that the software is described as a stripped down Windows 95. Until now
Microsoft never stripped anything except my wallet.

I even participated in a focus group for Texas Instrument's new pocket
machine. It was fun to see the actual advertising that hit the papers a
week or so ago. It seems they were actually listening.

But I can't get really excited. The PIMs might make great stocking
stuffers, but spend my own money... nah! That's easy for me to say. Last
year I went berserk trying to decide, during the Federal Shutdown,
whether to buy a Sharp Wizard (I bought it - returned it- and then
bought it again!) I got it at a great price from a for sale newsgroup. I
just had to have it. Every month I attend a meeting of community
volunteers and everyone pulls out their PIMs setting them in front of
their seats on the table.

I loved it at first. I practiced taking notes and typing with my thumbs.
But where am I supposed to carry it? It fits, barely, into my inside
jacket pocket, but the effect is worse than the heavy pocket radio I
insisted on carrying in the early 80s. I remember the worn linings in my
suit jackets. And where do you put it if you don't wear a jacket?

Women can carry them in their purses. I have tried carrying a little
leather pouch. But I haven't been trained to remember it. So now it sits
in a brief case dedicated to community affairs and I see it once or
twice a month.

The other watchword now, more than ever, is speed. Speed SPEED!

For those of us who were doing quite well with 12 megahertz 286s just a
few years a go, the idea of 200 MHz clock speeds seems dizzying. But, of
course since the new software has to do so much just to put a character
on the screen, we really don't see much improvement.

The other night I was visiting a friend who is using a 486/66. I wanted
to show a new feature on my web page and logged on using his new 33.6
modem. Surprise, the pages loaded more slowly than they do on my old 386
pawnshop special. The difference: configuration and RAM.

The lesson: If you are running a 386, this may be the time to move up
even though I intend to hold out a little longer. Go straight to a
Pentium, the cost differential is becoming minimal. If you are already
at the 486/66 level it might, just might, be worth moving to a Pentium,
but if you are on a budget, look into adding memory on your old machine.
If you are already running a Pentium, look to adding RAM before even
thinking about getting a faster chip. RAM is cheap right now. I thought
it was cheap when I added 8 meg last summer but now it costs about half
as much.

Unfortunately, the only problem with RAM is that doesn't look very
impressive under the tree.

On the other hand, perhaps you can convince your significant other to
give you some, if you promise NOT to sing, Thanks for the Memory"

For more on speed, see my essay, The Corner Garage, in the collected
Reflections of a ModemJunkie. There is a link from, guess where, my
home page!


                             =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Leonard Grossman, is an attorney who works for the government. He is a
WindoWatch regular and has been contributing "Reflections" for some
time. Leonard's home page was chosen as a "Best o'
comp.infosystems.www.announce" site during April 1996. He is also
president of his local user group in Chicago. Comments can be sent to
grossman@mcs.com.


   ww page 9
   Wordperfect Suite V7 Part III
  


                            COREL PRESENTATIONS
                      Copyright 1996 by Frank McGowan


This month's installment completes my evaluation of the various software
suites offered by Microsoft, Lotus and Corel, Corel Presentations, a
component of Wordperfect Suite V7. Before leaving, I must ask the
following rhetorical question: Is it just a coincidence that Corel's
answer to the Microsoft Office Manager (MOM) is the Desktop Applications
Director (DAD)?


General Evaluation

At the risk being charged with plagiarism, let me paraphrase the late
Spiro Agnew: If you've seen one presentations program, you've seen them
all. While there are differences, they resemble each other much more
than they are distinguishable. Like its counterparts (PowerPoint and
Freelance), Corel Presentations provides an easy-to-use interface and a
myriad of features that let you produce attractive slide shows.

After my complaints about the mysterious nature of product names (e.g.,
Quattro Pro, Lotus), I should point out that Corel deserves credit for
directness, if not imaginativeness, in this area: what could be more
straightforward than naming a presentations program Presentations?


Documentation

As always, my first impression of a program is formed by the
documentation that comes with it. As one of my first tech writing
managers stressed, way back when, the manual is the user's window into
the software. This was long before Windows was anything other than a
twinkle in Bill Gates's eye.

I continue to be pleased by the job done by the writer(s) of the Quick
Results user's guide. If the book is the work of one person, it
represents a monumental task of heroic proportions, worthy of a
significant increase in salary and a promotion for the writer. If it's
the work of several writers, each assigned a section, then the
supervisor, editor, or whoever coordinated the work deserves the raise:
the writing is seamless, with each section seeming to have been the
output of one person. Either way, it's a very nice piece of work.


User Interface

The first-time user will probably find the startup screen
non-threatening at worst, and reassuring at best. Assuming a user with
even a modicum of experience in a Windows environment, the options and
icons displayed, as shown below, should be comprehensible.

The default is to open an existing file, which might be the one you
worked on last, displayed, in this instance, as pdc.shw. The only
puzzlement might be in figuring out the difference between a new drawing
and a new slide show. I confess that had me a little stymied at first.
It is a little beyond the ken of most neophytes, but it does belong on
the start-up screen, nonetheless. For the beginner, it can be safely
ignored because not many of us remain beginners very long.

A drawing is a graphic you create, as contrasted with prefab clipart.
The example cited in the user guide is a logo for your organization, for
which clipart is unavailable. The book is a little sketchy on how to do
this, suggesting that you consult the Help file, under create: drawn
object, which leads to the question of how this index was created. Why
not drawing, new: creating? If Monday-morning quarterbacking were a
professional sport, I'd be an all-star!


Features

In the neat category belongs QuickCorrect, which makes on-the-fly fixes
to your favorite typo's, though I might suggest one or two small changes
to its list, such as replacing "august" with "August". It may not always
refer to the month, but simply be an adjective.

The clipart, called QuickArt, strikes me as more appealing than
PowerPoint's, but your mileage may vary. Beauty, or should I say
coolness(?) is in the eye of the beholder, after all.

It took a while to get used to, but the idea of layers in slides makes
sense. When you create a slide show, you get to choose from masters that
provide uniformity of appearance to the slides. Each master comprises
several templates consisting of a background layer of colors, patterns,
logos, etc. and a layout layer of a bulleted list, organization chart,
etc. The background, being the deepest layer, remains the same, no
matter what you select as the layout layer (one layer above background).
The slide layer or the topmost layer is where you enter the text,
graphics, or whatever you want to display when you run the show. You can
also edit these underlying layers, or create your own. As it is,
Presentations serves up twelve masters (- which is preferable to your
trying to serve more than one!)  [Editorial note: I really believe that
suite stress has gotten to this lad...]

Outliner view is best for editing individual slides, uncluttered by
color and special effects. As with PowerPoint, double-clicking selects a
word while triple-clicking selects a paragraph.


Nit Picks

OK, let's get persnickety. One of Presentations's features, included
with the other presentation applications, is the annotation gizmo,
called the highlighter, that shows up when you're running your slide
show. If you want to add emphasis, or jot down an important point you
somehow overlooked when you created the slide, you can write your note
directly onto the slide, or click and drag to underline or circle those
ideas that deserve extra stress.

As for writing with this device - good luck! My penmanship is bad
enough, but my mousemanship is far worse. The best I can manage is a
scrawl unworthy of the average 6-year old wielding his first crayon. I'm
a little better at underlining, but the difference is marginal. So, this
feature is not a major biggie for me.

The highlighter, is always there, even though it's not obvious. There's
no icon on-screen during the slide show. You simply click and drag
across the screen, and the highlighting shows up. If what you see is not
what you want, you get to choose a highlight color and line width when
you tell Presentations to run the slide show. You can choose from a vast
array of colors (red being the default) and line weights from 0.001" up
to 1"(the default is 0.05").

Now for the major nitpick: For the life of me, I can't figure out how to
erase a highlight once it's on screen and typing E, as in PowerPoint,
doesn't do it. I guess the folks at Corel assume you'll never mess up
with highlighter. They definitely didn't have ME in mind!


Summary (Part One)

As presentation applications go, Corel's version is neck-and-neck with
PowerPoint and Freelance. It has all the features you need to make your
case, sell your product, or persuade someone to adopt your strategy. In
terms of the one I'd recommend, I'll adopt a Clintonian stance and say
that any of them will do what you want, with about the same amount of
mental effort on your part. I'm not saying this because I'm afraid to
offend anyone, but because it's my view. I've probably only succeeded in
offending all three software development groups by straddling the fence.
Unlike the devo's who designed and implemented the programs, I'm too far
away from the forest to see the difference among the individual trees.

One really powerful application for any of these programs is one that
isn't so obvious: education. Both my wife and I teach computer software
at the local community college, and often find ourselves with upwards of
twenty students in a class. Each student has his/her own workstation, as
well as his/her own style of learning. Running around from student to
student is both arduous and inefficient. Trying to get and hold their
attention makes things even more frustrating. Jotting instructions on a
whiteboard in grease pencil just doesn't grab them: people have been
conditioned, it seems, to ignore someone talking or writing at the front
of the room.

Put a TV set up there, however, and it's a new ballgame. Hook that TV to
a computer and flash a presentation slide show on the screen and you've
got their eyes and, hopefully, their minds, if not their hearts. Both of
us now use our class prep time to prepare PowerPoint presentations as a
way to get our points across to all the students (well, the vast
majority of them, anyway), in addition to working with them one on one
during class. This is certainly one way of gearing education to the MTV
generation As an aside, I refuse to include rock music, however - call
me a Luddite if you will, but I draw the line there.


Summary (Part Two)

Having now spent the better part of a year looking at the three major
software suites, my view of their strengths and weaknesses comes down to
the following bit of all-American sagacity: You pays your money and you
makes your choice. Despite minor divergences here and there, some of
which I may have only imagined, there's barely a jot of significant
difference from one to another. Trying to recommend one over another is
a little like trying to tell someone why one brand of automobile is
better than another. It's really a matter of personal preference and/or
experience. Those of you who cut your eyeteeth on Lotus 1-2-3 will be
inclined to go for Smart Suite; those weaned on WordPerfect will lean
towards Corel. For Microsoft mavens, Office will be preferred. You can't
go wrong with any of them.

Let me quickly amend the above, slightly, based on my wife's review of
this article: I should point out that my comments apply to the general
user, not the specialist. As with most things in life, the more familiar
you become with something, the more glaring become its strengths and
weaknesses. I'm certain that there are legions of highly experienced
gurus out in guruland who will be quick to point out the gaps and gaffes
in my reviews, based upon years of discovering the quirks of a
particular program. I humbly stress that my comments are aimed at those
trying to decide which of the three suites to purchase, not at those who
already know!


                             =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Should we suggest to McGowan that by doing these suite evaluations that
he has become a guru himself? Those of you who have followed his suites
series will understand his need to go on to something else. In any case,
Frank took on this task and has brought his rich teaching and writing
background to the task. A regular WindoWatch contributor we look forward
to his next offering!


   ww page 10
   PhotoDeluxe from Adobe: A Product Review
  


                     ADOBE PHOTODELUXE FOR WINDOWS
                  Copyright 1996 By Linda L. Rosenbaum


With the increasing availability of graphical replication tools such as
lower priced digital cameras, much cheaper scanners, Kodak PhotoCD, and
less expensive color printers, there is subsequently, increased interest
in the appropriate tools to better integrate these various products. In
addition, with the increased usage of Web pages, there is also a pickup
of interest in the proper tools to create graphics for the Web.

In the past, programs that could touch up and manipulate photos and
other graphics as well as integrate photos with written words were the
domain of expensive programs geared towards the graphic/DTP
professional. Of course, those types of programs still abound, but there
is a growing market for less expensive and less complicated programs
that can be used by non-professionals. One such product is Adobe
PhotoDeluxe by Adobe Systems Incorporated. Adobe PhotoDeluxe was first
released for the Macintosh and a version for Windows (version 1.0) was
released last spring.

I have been a user of Kodak PhotoCD for some time and recently acquired
a Kodak DC 40 digital camera. Between my husband and myself we also own
several different graphical oriented programs. However I have never
figured out how to get much beyond the very basics of opening a graphic
image in such a program and perhaps doing some very simplistic
manipulation of the photo/image. As a result I was very interested in
trying a program such as Adobe Photo-Deluxe. Perhaps, with its guidance,
I could begin to learn how to enhance and change an image, as well as be
able to use the various images in more than just basic cards created
with software such as Microsoft Publisher.

Adobe PhotoDeluxe for Windows runs in Windows 3.1, Windows NT 3.51, or
Windows 95. In Windows 3.1, it utilizes Win32s. The program also
requires 45MB of hard drive space as well as a double speed CD-ROM
drive, a 486 or faster CPU, a minimum of 8MB of RAM. As with most
graphic oriented programs, the more memory you have the better off you
will be when using this particular program. The video card and monitor
must be capable of at least 640x480x256. In addition to the Adobe
PhotoDeluxe software program itself, the Adobe PhotoDeluxe CD-ROM comes
with more than 500 templates, clip-art images, sample photos, free
fonts, and the Adobe Type Manager utility. It also comes with a trial
version of DiAMAR Interactive's Better Photography, a special edition of
Berkeley Systems' After Dark, special effects from MetaTools, and the
Adobe Acrobat reader software.

When I installed Adobe PhotoDeluxe, I chose to leave out After Dark, the
Adobe reader, as I already have that installed, and Quicktime for
Windows, also on my system. The install itself was uneventful and I got
down to cases trying and testing out the program.

Unfortunately I ran into a serious problem right away. The images I
brought into PhotoDeluxe to work with did not display properly within
PhotoDeluxe. They did display properly in other graphical oriented
programs such as Paint Shop Pro. I tried more than one display driver
for my video card (Matrox Millennium) with no improvement. I have since
gotten a newer NT 4.0 video driver for the Millennium but that has not
improved the on-screen display problems with PhotoDeluxe. Adobe tech
support has confirmed that they see/get the same screen display problems
in PhotoDeluxe that I am getting in NT 4.0 with the Millennium video
card. They also verified that this problem does not exist in NT 3.51
with the Matrox supplied video drivers for NT 3.51. At this point in
time it is unclear if the screen display problems are strictly a video
card driver problem or some interaction between PhotoDeluxe, the video
card and NT 4.0. Since PhotoDeluxe was released long before NT 4.0 was
released, Adobe does not make any claims the program will work properly
in NT 4.0. In addition, since the market for this program for use in NT
4.0 is rather small, this problem will not get high priority to be
fixed. Despite the problems, I, of course, forged ahead trying to use
the program. I have gotten more used to ignoring or trying to ignore the
screen display problems, but it is a definite detriment when trying to
use a program that specializes in enhancing the image as well as
creating various items that utilize photos.

I have also found Adobe PhotoDeluxe to be more temperamental than
virtually any other program I use on a regular basis. I tend to get Dr.
Watson errors while using PhotoDeluxe regularly as well as most times
when I close down the program. I have since learned that if I start to
get them very, very frequently I am better off restarting NT 4.0. At
this point in time I don't know if these problems are related to the
screen display problems noted above or something else.

PhotoDeluxe has two basic modes that one can work in. One is called
Guided Activities and the other is called On Your Own. In Guided
Activities, you are led step by step to either touch up a photo or
create something using a photo. In On Your Own you can do the touching
up yourself or you can create something yourself.

Adobe PhotoDeluxe works on the concept of layers, which is similar, from
what I understand, to programs such as Adobe Photoshop and other
higher-end image programs. Each part of a project is a different layer.
Hence, in order to make changes to something, the proper layer much be
selected. In addition, text that is brought into PhotoDeluxe becomes a
bitmap or graphic layer itself. As a result, text cannot be directly
edited but rather must be deleted and started over again. I had a
problem adjusting to this concept since I am used to being able to edit
text in programs such as Microsoft Word or Microsoft Publisher. However
I have been given the impression that the way PhotoDeluxe treats text is
similar to other programs like it. I have now gotten used to the idea of
experimenting via deleting and starting again. I have also run into
problems selecting a text image I want to delete when working in Guided
Activities. I am still not sure if this is a problem with my fingers or
a design feature that just doesn't work as I might expect it to.

PhotoDeluxe has an abundance of Clue cards which give guidance virtually
every step of the way. The Clue cards exist whether one is doing a
Guided Activity or an activity On Your Own. A clue card can be retired
by checking off that you don't want that particular one to be displayed
in the future. I personally like having the Clue cards even though that
I have found many of them tend to display on top of what I am trying to
work on. This makes it very hard to do what is suggested by the Clue
card and have it continue to display until you are ready to move to the
next step.

Whether one is using Guided Activities or On Your Own, it is best to
start off with bringing a photo into PhotoDeluxe and then touching it
up. A photo can be retrieved from several different places, including:
(1) from somewhere on your hard drive; (2) via scanning; (3) direct from
several different brands of digital cameras; (4) from Kodak PhotoCD; or
(5) from one of the sample photos or decorations on the PhotoDeluxe
CD-ROM. PhotoDeluxe can read directly several different graphic formats
including: PhotoDeluxe 1.0, PhotoShop 3.0, BMP, GIF, JPEG, Kodak
PhotoCD, PCX, and TIFF. It does not read the proprietary format of our
digital camera directly, so I use the software that came with the
digital camera to convert its pictures to either JPEG, TIFF, or BMP, and
then bring the converted picture into PhotoDeluxe for touch up etc. I
have been able to open up Kodak PhotoCD pictures in PhotoDeluxe
directly.

In Guided Activities, manipulating photos is broken up into two main
categories - Touch Up Photo and Transform Photo. Each of these then has
several different activities one can select for step by step guidance.
For example, in Touch Up Photo, one can select one of the following
three activities: Size Orientation, Quality, and Remove Red Eye. In
Transform Photo, one can select one of the following groups of
activities to do: Collage, Fun, Art, Cool, or Internet. After selecting
one of these groups, several choices within that group are displayed.
For example, the choices under Fun are Distort, Motion, Cool Text,
Perspective, or Coloring Book.

As one can see there is a wealth of different things that can be done
with an individual photo. I have mostly experimented with changing the
quality of a particular photo but must confess that I have not had a
tremendous amount of success so far. I also now tend to do this in On
Your Own. After selecting On Your Own from the main startup screen, I
then select Get Photo. After getting a photo, I then select Modify.
Within the Quality tab, I can do Instant Fix, Color Balance,
Brightness/Contrast, Hue/Saturation, Sharpen, and Remove Dust/Scratch. I
have had mixed results with Instant Fix; sometimes I think it does do a
decent job of changing the quality of the photo and at other times I
think it gives me a result that is worse than what I started with! There
is an Undo under Edit, in the pull down menus, although there is only
one level of Undo. Under File, there is also a Revert To Last Saved
option. I have had a lot of fun experimenting with Color Balance,
Brightness/Contrast, and Hue/Saturation. Each one brings up a box with
the various choices of options which can be manipulated. These are
displayed as a line on a spectrum with values for each choice starting
in the center at zero.

In addition, I have preview selected which means the image instantly
shows the change being made as I move the triangle on the line in the
graph. However, only one choice displayed above can be worked on at a
time. I have certainly gotten some very interesting effects this way!
One of the areas of this exercise that I have not gotten a good handle
on, is that which looks good visually does not always translate to a
good or better printout on my color printer (an HP 1200C). I have the
sense that a lot of this is trial and error. Luckily this trial and
error is quite easily done in PhotoDeluxe.

After enhancing and/or manipulating a photo, one can save it in two main
ways in PhotoDeluxe. One is the traditional way of saving it to the hard
drive. When originally saving an image in PhotoDeluxe, the only choice
of format to save is PhotoDeluxe 1.0 (*.pdd). A Photo-Deluxe image can
be exported into several different file formats including those file
formats that PhotoDeluxe read to begin this photo altering procedure.
PhotoDeluxe also has a save feature called Hold Photo. This does save
the photo to the hard drive but in a directory under the main program
called Hold. One can then more easily bring photos which are in the Hold
area by selecting Hold which then displays what photos are there. You
then click on the one you want to open up. Photos in Hold are saved in
PhotoDeluxe format. This format does create a rather large file so it is
important to delete photos from Hold that are no longer needed.

Besides the ability to touch up and manipulate a photo, the heart of
this program is to be able to create various projects that utilize your
photos. Within Guided Activities, there is a selection called Cards &
More. This choice then gives you the following activities that you can
perform with step by step instructions: Calendars, Cards, Frames,
Covers, and Fliers Signs Etc.

I have found that doing projects via Cards & More in Guided Activities
is a mixed blessing. The Guided Activities are structured to be done in
the exact order of the activity. However I have found that I can go back
and forth if I have not clicked on Done which is the final step of a
Guided Activity. On the other hand, at times I have found it easier to
select done and start again from the beginning. For several different
projects I have not been able to figure how to create them without using
Guided Activities. In addition, I have not been able to modify
previously created projects done within Guided Activities using On Your
Own for some projects, such as Cards. Its my belief that this
problem/feature may be more a function of the specific project as well
as how PhotoDeluxe is designed.

I have experimented with Calendars, Cards and some of the projects
within Flyers, Signs, Etc. The program itself comes with the ability to
create monthly or yearly calendars through 1997 and, of course,
including 1996. That probably seemed like enough when the program first
shipped. Given that its now almost 1997, I hope there will be a new
version or an ability to add more months and years to Calendars in the
not too distant future. Cards work very well if you carefully follow the
step by step procedure. However, I have found that only one photo can be
inserted per card. I would prefer to have the ability to have more than
one photo in a single card. Within most of the projects I have
experimented with, I have also added some of the decorations that come
with the program itself. There is a nice selection of decorations and
the step by step guided activities make it quite easy to add them. For
calendars and labels, I have been able to do basic modifications of size
and location of decorations and photos from within On Your Own. I have
found that I have to be very careful to make sure the correct layer is
selected or else the modification does not really happen.

There are a multitude of other neat features of this program. Some of
these include the following:

1) Ability to have several different magnifications when working on a
   project. The choices, it appears, are preset by design and cannot be
   changed, at least, not that I have been able to see.

2) Variety of ways to accomplish the same task, using pull down menus,
   via Guided Activities, via On Your Own, via buttons that do a
   particular action, etc.

3) Ability to hide or not show all or particular layers. This is
   accomplished by clicking on the eye on the layer to hide or show it.
   I have found that this helps me understand exactly what each layer
   contains and hence helps me figure out what layer is the proper one
   to make changes on or with.

4) Ability to get a variety of special effects and combinations of
   photos and so forth.

Overall I am impressed with Adobe PhotoDeluxe despite the problems I
have had with it in NT 4.0. Adobe has recently reduced the price of this
program so it can now be gotten for about $50 at your local computer
software store. I think this is a good program for someone to get their
feet wet with photos, touching up of photos and creating projects that
incorporate photos. However for anyone who intends to use this program
in NT 4.0, I must again caution that I have serious screen display
problems as well as Dr. Watson errors. In addition it is important that
any potential user of this program realize it does have certain
limitations, particularly when compared with a much more expensive and
high end product such as Adobe Photoshop.


                             =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Linda Rosenbaum lives and works in a suburb of New York City. She is an
assistant controller at the World Headquarters for a large global
manufacturing company. She has two young children and a husband whose
full time job is to take care of the kids. When not working, Linda can
be found on a variety of online services and the Internet reading and
writing about her experiences with NT, networking, and multimedia. She
maintains a home network of four systems using a combination of NT and
Windows 95. Linda is the NT Editor for WindoWatch and can be reached via
Email at either lindar@cyburban.com or 71154.2622@compuserve.com.


   ww page 11
   A First Look at Acrobat v.3                    The PreRelease Version
  


                    Adobe's Acrobat v.3 Flies High!
                    Copyright 1996 by Lois Laulicht


We have been happily jumping the new feature hurdles of the newest Adobe
Acrobat using the pre-release version of Acrobat v3. It has been a very
satisfying experience to explore the program to see if Adobe has
smoothed away the remaining few rough spots from v 2.1. These have been
tiny but annoying lapses to those of us who use Acrobat on a regular
basis. The truth is, that Adobe has taken desk top/electronic publishing
to still a higher plateau. Their missionary work of giving away their
reader/viewer from almost the very beginning has made possible
world-wide distribution of PDF files, done monthly for WindoWatch to
seventy-five plus international Simtel mirror sites.

We've been publishing WindoWatch using Acrobat since late 1994. We began
within the context of "You must be nuts not to use the Microsoft help
engine!" This was just before the Internet was widely accepted as the
place to be! A few good friends cautioned me to ignore the groupies who
offered Word with its massive viewer as an alternative to the Windows
help engine or even Write! (Choke!) Notwithstanding rumors to the
contrary, Edlin was never a serious contender!

As an aside, some of our PDF editions have exceeded 16 Meg of raw Word
docs. None of the aforementioned options offered security for either
documents or authors. In any case, there were complaints about the size
of Acroread, the size of the final PDF, and the size of the editor's
colossal ego to waltz into Never-Never Land without Cap'n Bill and the
merry band from Redmond!

In those days Acroread was about a megabyte and a long download for
14400 modems. The various drivers were imperfect at best. However the
tools did improve and by the time version 2.1 appeared we started
expecting, and indeed got, a consistency of quality.


Help! The Bad News

Let's get what I don't like out of the way now. I have never cared for
the way the Acrobat help is organized and still don't. It's klutzey and
non-intuitive even for those of us who know the software well. I wanted
to learn about online forms and followed the directions to bring to the
desktop a PDF file which was to describe the procedure. I have a sense
that big paragraphs of narrative were missing and indeed found them on a
variety homepages who specialize in third party PDF software. I opted
for the full PDF manual which I could not find at the Adobe Web site but
did locate somewhere else. Hopefully this will find its way onto the
final release CD-Rom!

It seems to me the fifty plus page online guide misses the mark because
it gives instruction out of a context. When a command or procedure is
clicked on with the working page of copy on screen, a help panel coming
up to the side of the page, takes one thru the series of steps to
solution. This approach not only helps one solve the problem but shows
the way, task by task, of how to do so. In the world of Windows this is
the criterion ! All of the required Acrobat help is available but there
are insufficient visual cues, white space or the Help Wizards which
Windows users have come to depend upon.

I will stop this rant only because it goes no where. Fellas, if there is
a profound weakness in Acrobat, it seems to me, it is here. It is of
dubious value to make this winner widely available, and make no mistake
Acrobat is a winner, with a series of pages which don't quite do it. The
smaller chunks are a great improvement over the former 2.1 offering.
Nonetheless context sensitive help is a must, and soon!


The Very Good News

Acrobat is no longer what I would describe as pricey software.
Micro-Warehouse in their latest catalog (1-800-367-7080) is offering an
upgrade from AcrobatPro for $59.95 and an upgrade from Acrobat Exchange
for $79.95. Additionally there is a limited time SPECIAL for Microsoft
Office owners to become PDFers for just $99.95. Adobe take a bow!
Acrobat has entered the main stream software arena with both price and
quality and that's very smart merchandising. If the rumor mill I listen
to, is any where close to gossiping about reality, HTML is slowly losing
its dead heat race with Acrobat. The final argument is one of cost or
no-cost depending upon the HTML editor one uses.

There is almost no debate about which tool delivers the better product.
For quality electronic presentations that one might wish to keep or ask
folks to spend money for, Acrobat is the way to go! The helper
application approach makes for an excellent compromise using the browser
and its native language, HTML. The integration of both tools and the
ability to almost instantly create new PDFs makes online work very much
more productive.

Probably the two biggest bonuses for me were tiny twangs after the
compile process. There were problems of smudgy screen fonts which have
completely disappeared in version 3. I am now convinced that this was a
result of how the software handled system resources. Further, many of
the graphics had been reproduced with little discernible variation in
either color or dimension. But no more! Herb Chong's last article Lean
and Mean has been redone with version 3 tools resulting in startling
differences. Prior to v.3, if there was the smallest typo the whole
procedure had to be redone because there was no way to make the tiniest
text correction onto the PDF. The big T on the Exchange tool bar comes
to the rescue and handily fixes little slips!

And it gets better still! The compression ratio continues to improve.
Using Acrobat v.3 reduced the size of WindoWatch 2_9 PDF files from
fifteen to twenty per cent! One is obliged a cautionary phrase. Each
system is unique and should be compared one to another in very general
terms. On my Pentium 133 with 32 Meg of memory the following occurred.
The original wwwin2_9 issue contained a drastically reduced in size
piece done by Herb Chong. This raw Word7 doc originally weighed in at
4896k and was made smaller by limiting the number of images we
published. After editing and prior to the PDFWriter compression, its
Word size was reduced to 1712k. The total issue, using v.21 tools was
876268 bytes and dated 10/31/96. The soon to be released v3 size with
the unaltered Lean and Mean article is 1056k.

You will see below a comparison of each unique segment of the issue
under discussion. I find it constructive to understand how the various
tools really produce. We did not run a comparison of Distiller to
PDFWriter.

               WWWIN2_9                           WWWIN2_9
      Stats Using Acrobat v.2.1            Stats Using Acrobat v.3

   PAGE1 .PDF     5,858   10-30-96      PAGE1 .PDF     3737   11-11-96
   PAGE2 .PDF     5,033   10-30-96      PAGE2 .PDF     2912   11-11-96
   PAGE3 .PDF     9,616   10-30-96      PAGE3 .PDF     6649   11-11-96
   PAGE4 .PDF   339,366*  10-30-96      PAGE4 .PDF   270271*  11-11-96
   PAGE5 .PDF   181,952   10-31-96      PAGE5 .PDF   179288   11-11-96
   PAGE6 .PDF    25,377   10-30-96      PAGE6 .PDF    22121   11-11-96
   PAGE7 .PDF    10,688   10-30-96      PAGE7 .PDF     8680   11-11-96
   PAGE8 .PDF    18,146   10-30-96      PAGE8 .PDF    16233   11-11-96
   PAGE9 .PDF    60,713   10-30-96      PAGE9 .PDF    59087   11-11-96
   PAGE10.PDF    16,383   10-30-96      PAGE10.PDF    14430   11-11-96
   PAGE11.PDF    28,873   10-30-96      PAGE11.PDF    26920   11-11-96
   PAGE12.PDF   123,411   10-30-96      PAGE12.PDF   120083   11-11-96
   PAGE13.PDF     8,503   10-30-96      PAGE13.PDF     6422   11-11-96
   PAGE14.PDF    10,538   10-30-96      PAGE14.PDF     8492   11-11-96
   PAGE15.PDF    13,268   10-30-96      PAGE15.PDF    11245   11-11-96
   PAGE16.PDF    10,262   10-30-96      PAGE16.PDF     8216   11-11-96
   PAGE17.PDF     7,869   10-30-96      PAGE17.PDF     5820   11-11-96
   PAGE18.PDF    34,768   10-30-96      PAGE18.PDF    18268   11-11-96
   PAGE19.PDF    12,254   10-30-96      PAGE19.PDF    10230   11-11-96

        Total   922,878 bytes                Total  799,104 bytes

      *Reduced Chong article          *In the final release the original
                                      PAGE4 was substituted 569,493 bytes


Another improvement, particularly when using Distiller, is the decrease
in time when compiling the documents into the PDF format. What
heretofore had taken minutes to accomplish now take only seconds. Again
using Herb Chong's last piece which was huge by our standards, the
compile time using PDFWriter was reduced by fifty percent.

PDFers still search for that elusive but perfect postscript driver for
their unique system as do I. Until that happens, using Distiller, some
of Herb's images are less than perfect, a few are gray while most others
survived the Distiller crunching intact. It took PDFWriter to produce
the clean finished product.

One does not fully tap new software in a matter of days or begin to
explore and really learn the new features that quickly. I have yet to
understand the forms procedures or begun to use the capture software
with my flatbed scanner. That will come with a bit more time.

When the final arrives we will put it through its paces yet again and
report upon what we discover.


                             =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Lois Laulicht is the Editor of WindoWatch.



   ww page 12
   The Babbage Legacy
  

                   CHARLES BABBAGE - COMPUTER PIONEER
                     Copyright 1996 by Russ Jensen


All of you reading this must be computer people or you couldn't even be
reading it. Further, we all know what a great tool the digital computer
can be! However, many of you, I suspect, probably don't realize that the
idea of the digital computer is actually rooted in the past - the
distant past! Would you believe that there was a man who lived over 150
years ago who had the total concept of the computer in his mind?

His name was Charles Babbage.

He had an idea for a mechanical digital computer, but he was never able
to construct it, in part due to the state of mechanical technology of
the day, but also for another reason which I shall mention later. Even
so, I can assure you that Mr. Babbage would not at all have been
surprised at today's high tech computers and would probably say if he
were to come back today "you see, I told you that it had endless
possibilities!"

Mr. Babbage could probably be classified as a genius. He certainly was
an interesting individual. He was quite intelligent and just loved all
aspects of science and mathematics. He had one pet peeve, however, he
HATED organ grinders!

Charles was born to a well-to-do family, his father being a London
banker. He was born the day after Christmas in 1791. He was a sickly
child, but had it better than most of his siblings who died young - only
one sister living into adulthood. He was too sick for about a year to go
to school, but was tutored during that period.

In 1811 he began attending Cambridge University. During his first year
he read the works of the great European mathematicians of the time, and
soon discovered that he knew more of The Calculus than his instructors.
In his second year he joined a group of students, who became known as
the Analytical Society, who were devoted to translating the work of the
French mathematician Lacroix into English. These same chaps concerned
themselves with propagating the use of the "d's", denoting
differentials, of Leibnitz over the "dots" used by Newton; the use of
which at the university Babbage once referred to as "the 'dotage' of the
university". Incidentally, Isaac Newton is one of my personal folk heros
as Mr. Babbage also is.

Babbage later became interested in astronomical instruments and started
a project to find a method for accurately making fine graduations on
their scales. But, he thought, what good is that if the tables used to
determine where to point the instrument are not accurate themselves? So
he came up with an idea for a mechanical calculating machine to create
more accurate astronomical tables. This device, he dubbed the Difference
Engine, employed the mathematical method of Successive Differences. Not
only would his proposed device calculate tables, including a method of
carrying from one column to the next, it would also print the results of
it's calculations on paper! By 1822 Babbage had build two experimental
versions of his machine. By the next year he had convinced the British
government to provide funding for further development - the total cost
of the project being estimated at three to five thousand pounds - with
an estimated completion time of three years.

These estimates proved to be very unrealistic with the project never
being completed! This was due partly because Babbage was constantly
revising his ideas, causing most previous work on the device to be
abandoned many times. Because of this the government eventually refused
to pour any more funds into the project, with some officials calling it
a humbug, and others even accusing him of trying to defraud the
government.

One of Babbage's later ideas for the Difference Engine involved letting
the output of the highest order column be fed back to other parts of the
machine. This resulted in him arranging the shafts and gears in a circle
rather than in a straight line. This meant that the machine could
"control itself"!

A machine based on that principle he referred to as an "Analytical
Engine". Babbage believed such a machine could be used to automatically
perform complex mathematical operations. It was around 1834 that he
began thinking about such a device.

Babbage's new brainchild would be made up of several sections all
working together to solve a problem - the problem to be solved being
able to be changed or programmed by the user.

This, as you can see, was very similar to the digital computers of
today!


The calculating of the Difference Engine was to be performed by the mill
which utilized refinements of the principles of the Difference Engine.
The device would also have a store (memory) capable not only of holding
constants, but intermediate results of the machine's calculations as
well - the mechanical equivalent of the memory of computers today. In
fact, these terms, mill and store are still used in England today to
denote a computer's CPU and memory respectively.

The input/output (I/O) of the Analytical Engine was also extremely
sophisticated. The input would consist of constants - Babbage envisioned
up to 1000 (of 50 decimal digits each) -which would be set by hand at
the start of a calculation on certain wheels in the machine. The
machine's instructions would come from rudimentary punched cards, the
idea Babbage got from Frenchman J.M. Jacquard's automatic weaving loom
which had been recently invented and was "all the rage" at the time.

The output Babbage proposed was an automatic printing mechanism similar
to what he had proposed for the Difference Engine, but it would also be
capable of printing two sheets at once, or creating a printing plate for
mass printing. He also envisioned the machine as being able to punch
cards as output. The control for the machine, of course, came from the
program cards as just described. It is easy to see the similarities
between Babbage's planned machine and the computers of today.

Every computer needs a programmer - and if the Analytical Engine had
ever been completed it's programmer would have possibly been a lady
named Ada Augusta King (nee Byron), the Countess of Lovelace. I'm sure
many of you have heard of the Ada programming language which is used
today and was named after this special lady.

Ada was the only legitimate daughter of the famed English poet Lord
Byron. Due to his philandering, his wife separated from him and raised
Ada by herself. Ada's mother soon discovered that her daughter had a
good mind, especially when it came to mathematics, so she hired the
well-known mathematician Augustus DeMorgan to tutor her. In those days
it was quite unusual for a woman to get more than a rudimentary
education, but Ada was special!

Ada and a friend once visited Charles Babbage and he explained his ideas
for the Analytical Engine to them. She immediately grasped his idea and
was fascinated by it! In later years she wrote extensively about the
Analytical Engine, describing Babbage's concept in much detail. She
eventually died at a fairly young age - which Babbage took very hard.

Although Babbage did not get much encouragement from his fellow
countrymen, other than Ada and a few others, regarding his new
brainchild, the Analytical Engine, the situation was quite different on
the Continent, especially in Italy. When an Italian scientist wrote of
Babbage's Analytical Engine in very complementary terms, he was invited
to speak at a scientific gathering at Turin in 1840.

He was also presented with two honorary orders from the Italian King
which he was very proud of - his achievements being hardly noticed by
England's scientific community which discouraged him very much
throughout his life.

As I said earlier, the British government eventually dropped it's
financial support of the Difference Engine. It was because of that, that
Babbage could not get them to finance the Analytical Engine, despite
Lady Lovelace's praises of it's concept to people in the government and
English society that she and her husband knew - and the praise he
received on the Continent.

So the Analytical Engine and Babbage's version of the Difference Engine
was never completed, partly because of the British government
withdrawing it's financial support of his Difference Engine project.
But, the reason for that was the failure of the Difference Engine
project being completed in a reasonable time, and for a reasonable
amount of money - at least as far as the government was concerned. And
one reason for that was Babbage's continually revising specifications
for the Difference Engine as construction went along.

It could therefore be conjectured that if Babbage had left the original
specifications for the Difference Engine alone it might have been
completed, and possibly then the government would have considered
financing the Analytical Engine. So, who knows, if Charles Babbage had
not been such a perfectionist England might have had a working prototype
of the modern digital computer, however, no one will ever know? The
above conjecture is purely this writer's, and I have not read anywhere
of such a theory - but it is interesting to ponder, nevertheless!

Now, a little about some other aspects of this great man's life. As far
as his family was concerned, Charles married during his years at the
university. His wife, Georgiana, bore him eight children, only to die
during her last delivery - a very, very sad event for Charles! Most of
his other children also died early in life, with only three sons
surviving him. Babbage's eldest son, Henry, who eventually became a
Colonel in the British Army, helped his father from time to time with
his engines and even worked on one himself after his father's death, as
we shall see.

In addition to his engines, throughout his life Charles was a prolific
writer on many scientific and mathematical subjects, all involving a
considerable amount of research. He also was an inventor, again
involving a variety of disciplines.

Babbage was fascinated by railroads, fairly new at the time, and
invented the locomotive cow catcher. He also had a brilliant idea for a
semaphore device which could show the engineer approximately how long
ago a previous train had passed. He was quite interested in the field of
optics and, among other things, came up with the idea for the
opthalmascope - the device the eye doctor uses to look into one's eyes.
Failing to patent it, the device was patented later by someone else.

Returning to the engines, we find that even though Babbage's version of
the Difference Engine was never built, a successful one was completed
in 1854 by a Swede named George Scheutz. This machine utilized "4th
Differences" and computed to an accuracy of 14 decimal digits, not the
50 that Babbage had proposed. Two years later it was purchased by an
Albany, New York observatory and used to compute astronomical tables
just as Babbage had proposed. A copy of the Scheutz engine was also used
in England to compute insurance actuarial tables.

As far as the Analytical Engine was concerned, several years after his
father's death his son Henry succeeded in building a working model of
the engine's "mill" and printing mechanism which he used to calculate
and print the multiples of pi to 29 decimal places. Parts of both of
Babbage's engines ended up in a London area museum where they can be
seen today.

Charles Babbage died at his home on October 18, 1871 at almost 80 years
of age, a long lifetime for a person in that time! He died somewhat of
an embittered man because of the failure of his pet project and of the
lack of recognition he had received from the scientific community in his
country. But, as you can see from the above, his ideas were far ahead of
their time, but "right on" as it turns out!


BIBLIOGRAPHY
   Charles Babbage - The Father Of The Computer, by Dan Halacey.
   Published 1970, Macmillan Co., New York.


                             =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Russ Jensen is an early retired engineer who is regularly found in
pinball publications. We hope that this is the first of many
contributions to WindoWatch.



   ww page 13
  The Education of Augusta Ada Byron King, Countess of Lovelace
  


                         The Making of a Genius
                     Copyright 1996 by David Kindle



The sound of a punch card. The hum of a power supply. The sound of a
printer as it spits its ink onto a plain page. These are all common
sounds of the 20th century. Without certain figures in history we would
have never seen the inventions that create these sounds. The invention
we called the computer has transformed and continues to metamorphose
copious aspects of our accustomed lives.

A woman by the name of Augusta Ada Byron King, Countess of Lovelace [*1],
can be credited with much of the development of the technology we
possess today. Many have said that Ada, as she was called, could have
not been a genius but merely a note-taker for Charles Babbages' [*2]
creation of the Analytical Engine [*3]. In this paper, I will explore the
reasons why Ada Byron King should not only receive praise for her
extraordinary notes on the Analytical Engine, but also to credit her as
being the true hard working intellectual she was. I will focus my
research on the details of her education. I will save the repeated
stories of Ada's life history and accomplishments and present to you why
she was more than merely a notetaker and was indeed a true academician.

Augusta Ada Byron was born the daughter of Lord Byron [*4] and Anne
Isabella Milbanke [*5] on December 10, 1815. Augusta was named after
her father's half-sister, Augusta, and Ada for an ancestor that had
lived during King John's reign [*6].

Lord and Lady Byron did not have a successful marriage and because of
their separation in 1816, Ada was brought up by her mother. Ada's
education began at the age of four when her mother saw fit to hire a
variety of governesses who never lasted very long. Nurses, governesses
and tutors were quickly dismissed if Lady Byron suspected an intimate
relationship was developing between them and the child [*7]. When Lady
Byron did not like the education being given she would fire the educator
and then teach Ada herself until she hired new tutors. Ada never
attended a formal school because it was common place of the time that
formal education was only meant for boys.

Ada surprised many, including her judgmental mother, with her
astonishing talents when she began to form letters at the age of two,
showing an interest in numbers [*8]. Ada was very adaptable to new
concepts, as noted by one of her governesses when she wrote, "She adds
up sums of five or six rows of figures with accuracy. She appears to
possess a mind well prepared to receive information - capable of
digesting much and vigorously alive to every new impression." [*9]

A Swiss educator by the name of Pestalozzi was one of the first
educators to instruct Ada with blocks thereby teaching her the theory
of design. One of Ada's governesses, Miss Lamont, commented that Ada
was an animated child and found pleasure "in imagining for herself as
she proceeded" rather than being guided by a model. Ada followed this
pattern throughout her life. [*10]

Between 1828 and 1829 many things changed in Ada's life. One of the
most significant of these changes was the fact that measles left her
bed ridden from 1829 until mid-1832. As a child of 13 who loved her
horses [*11] one could imagine the pain and frustration Ada suffered.
Her mother, however felt that being bed ridden was that of a blessing
for she could now study even more diligently. To this mean, Lady Byron
then hired tutors to ensure Ada's continuing education. Two more tutors,
Dr. King, the head of the Brighton Cooperative Society, and his spouse,
Mary, an Evangelical Christian, were also brought to teach Ada.

Ada called on the Kings to help her with her studies in Euclidean
geometry, algebra, astronomy, and optics. Prior to this she had only
known of the rudiments. Ada, eighteen at the time, wrote King, "....I
must cease to think of living for pleasure or self gratification; and
there is but one sort of excitement,.. that of study and intellectual
improvement." [*12] At this time she saw fit to sacrifice the adolescent
definition of fun and put her studies first and classify them as her
"excitement," to better her own welfare.

Miss Arabella Lawrence, a Liverpool educator, was also summoned to
teach. Ada's tone had changed dramatically in correspondence to
Arabella. Prior letters from Ada were reflective of her great
excitement for the subjects and her love of her studies. Subsequently
she now began to write to Arabella such things as, "I believe I have
nothing very new to tell you about my pursuits. I was obliged to omit
the Millar. I began to read it as usual, not thinking right. However,
I found my head in a sad state of confusion, and getting extremely
discouraged began to cry." [*13] Ada's mother did not take kindly to
these writings and instructed Miss Lawrence to help curb the trait of
the conversational litigation. I believe Ada was having trouble at this
point with her sickness but her strong drive forced her to continue
forward ignoring all physical ailments that plagued her.

Ada stumped and confounded most of her tutors. She had presented ideas
and questions that troubled her tutors. William Frend, Lady Byron's
former mathematics teacher, taught Ada astronomy and algebra. A highly
educated man who was dismissed from Cambridge University for religious
views described Ada as superstitious and questioning. In a letter Ada
cautiously questioned the significance of rainbows when she wrote, "..I
am very much interested on the subject just now, but I cannot make out
one thing at all, viz: why a rainbow always appears to the spectator to
be an arc of a circle. Why is it a curve at all., and why a circle
rather than any other curve? I hope I am not boring you with my
ignorance." [*14] This questioning further proves her vigor to proceed
further than teachable and explore the unknown. It is apparent that she
is almost cautious now to ask him questions that she feels may be
ignorant.

Frend's daughter Sophia later tutored Ada as well. Ada seemed to grow
fond of Sophia as noted in the letter to Frend; ".Pray remember me most
kindly to your daughter Sophia, believe me,.."[*15] Sophia and her father
greatly enhanced Ada's continuing education. Ada expressing her
gratitude wrote, "I have finished my Planetarium all but the part
which related to the Ephermeris which I have not yet got. I am extremely
obliged to you and your father for the excellent description you sent
me."[*16]

As a girl, Ada exhibited great enthusiasm for learning. When it came to
a new math theorem or book, she was always intensely excited. In a
letter to Lady Byron Ada wrote, "Hugo's Geometry[*17] went yesterday by
Creswell. I am much delighted with the entertaining pamphlet you left me
on that subject. I possessed myself this morning of the preliminary
part, which I found very amusing indeed. I am a little afraid of the
Theorems, However I must attack them boldly & do my best."[*18]. Notice
the adjectives she uses to describe her studies of math; "delighted",
"entertaining", "amusing." Rarely would she describe her subject as
tiring or boring. This exhibits her love of the subject and her vigor to
excel.

After Ada had recovered from the disease that left her bed-ridden, Miss
Lawrence was replaced by a series of tutors for chemistry, Latin,
shorthand, and music. Notably, William Turner, Ada's shorthand tutor,
offered much more than his lessons in shorthand. During his tenure,
William and Ada had an affair, however their illicit affair was
discovered and Turner was dismissed. After this Miss Briggs, Dr. King,
Mrs. King and others gave her lectures continuously on the subject of
love and sex.

On June 5, 1833, Ada met the 42-year-old mathematician Cambridge
University graduate, Charles Babbage, at a ball. Charles Babbage built
several prototype "engines", funded by British government, that would
later be credited to being the first idea of the modern computer.

In the autumn of 1841, Babbage reported his findings about the "engine"
at a seminar in Turin, Italy. An Italian, Manabrea, published an
article in French about what Babbage had reported. In 1843, Ada
translated Menabrea's article and showed Babbage her translation.
Babbage responded by asking her to add her own ideas to the
interpretation. Ada's own notes were almost three times as large as
those she started with. Later in her published article she predicted
that his machine was capable of composing complex music, producing
graphics, and could be used for both practical and scientific use. These
notes are what contributes most to her fame and creditability.

In 1834 Ada met and befriended with Mary Somerville [*19]. Mary, being a
great mathematician too, helped Ada with her studies. Mary let her
borrow books and they frequently discussed math problems together. In a
letter to Mary, Ada wrote, "I am afraid that when a machine, or a
lecture, or anything of the kind, comes in my way, I have no regard for
time, space, or any ordinary obstacles." Here she expressed her thanks
to Mary for listening to her questions and helping her even though
sometimes she could seem loquacious about the subject at hand. Mary was
also very fond of Ada. She encouraged her and loved to give her a hand.
In Mary's autobiography she writes, "......Ada was much attached to me,
and often came to stay with me....she always wrote to me for an
explanation when she met with any difficulty. Among my papers I lately
found many of her notes, asking mathematical questions..."[*20] I
believe Mary was not only an important tutor but also a consequential
confidant.

One of Ada's most influential tutors of mathematics was Augustus De
Morgan. Augustus was a friend of Charles Babbage and Lady Byron, and
taught at the University of London. De Morgan's gave Ada work to do from
textbooks and he would field questions from Ada regarding what she did
not understand of the readings. In a letter written to Augustus in 1840
Ada wrote, ".I am afraid that I do not understand what you were kind
enough to write about the Curve; and I think for this reason, -that I do
not know what the term equation to a curve means."[*21]

Among her great love of the horse and her true genius of the sciences
Ada had many other talents. Ada was able to play many musical
instruments including; piano, harp, and guitar. To her mother's dismay
however, Ada did not like the opera. She found it very tiring.

I believe a true talent can only be sculpted and not bestowed. Ada's
brilliance was not given to her from her teachers. Her teachers merely
sculpted it into the thing it became. Ada's talents were that of her own
and were laboriously earned. Ada suffered a very tiring life and a life
full of intellectual stimulus. She was able to pull through many
physical challenges that most could not do in her day. "Although it was
usual for a young woman of her class to be educated, the education was
typically superficial."[*22] Ada's education was not superficial. It was
superlative. Without Augusta Ada Byron King, Countess of Lovelace's
acumen we would have a lot less to learn from that era. Her
contributions to the computer industry will always remain far beyond her
time.

There is a wonderful poster that we had to publish with this piece.
Entitled "The Birth of the Computer Revolution," it depicts Charles
Babbage and Ada Lovelace as the founders of the computer and shows how
they could have imagined their great works to become. This poster was
submitted by Betty A. Toole, 1995. The poster can be viewed in the PDF
edition of WindowWatch.

The usage of Alphabet Function, arrived from the lack of support Babbage
received for his ideas. Some suggested a knighthood yet Babbage
disregarded this as being a "b" knighted, and then referred to himself
as "Sir Alphabet Function." This poster can be ordered by sending a
check for $13.00 to Critical Connection, P.O. Box 452, Sausalito,CA
94966.


In a graphic image available in the PDF edition of WindowWatch, there
are two undated letters from Ada Lovelace together with Babbages son's
instructions for operating a section of the Difference Engine and the
medal awarded to Babbage in 1824 by the Astronomical Society of London.

The first letter on paper hallmarked 1838 and attributed in a later hand
to 1840 or 1841, asks for an acquaintance's address: it is addressed
'Dear Mr. Babbage' and signed 'A.L.', and refers to an impending visit
to London. Neither letter mentions the subject of calculating.

The graphic was contributed by Dirk Craeynest, original from
http://www.londonmall.co.uk/babbage, 114 KB 535x699 JPEG) For our
purposes, we converted them to 256 color bitmaps.


                             =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
David Kindle is currently a programmer at a Naval Contractor. He makes
interactive multimedia programs that are used to train students via the
computer medium. David is finishing his masters degree at the George
Washington University and is majoring in Information Systems.


footnotes:

[*1] Ada Byron King (1815-1852), has been credited with much of the
     development of the computer. For this reason she has received much
     notoriety including the Ada language. Ada once suggested to Charles
     Babbage about writing a plan for how the engine could calculate
     Bernoulli numbers. This suggestion has been referenced as the first
     "computer program" and was named after her, ADA. The Ada language
     is a high-level universal computer language developed by the
     American Department of Defense in 1977 named after Ada Byron for
     all her efforts and studies for the advancement of computing. Her
     fame stems mostly from the notes she took on Babbages "Analytical
     Engine." Biographical information borrowed from, Dorothy Stein, The
     Continuum Dictionary of Women Biography (New York, NY: The
     Continuum Publishing Company, 1989). Additional information
     provided by Betty A. Toole, "Ada Byron, Lady Lovelace"
     (http://www.scottlan.edu/lriddle/women/love.htm, 2 pages).
     Hereafter Betty's web article.

[*2] Charles Babbage (1791-1871). Cambridge University student that
     devoted most of his life to his love of mathematics. Babbage built
     several prototype "engines", funded by British government, that
     would later be credited to being the first idea of the modern
     computer.

[*3] Charles Babbages Analytical Engine is credit to be one of the first
     concepts of a computer that could control itself or be fed
     programs. The Analytical Engine was one of many prototypes and
     unfortunately Babbage was refused further funds by the British
     government to ever finish his idea.

[*4] Ada's Father, George Gordon (1788-1824), later Lord Byron, was born
     in London. He was an English poet that led a very tiring life both
     emotionally and physically. His love lives were unstable and his
     health was equally matched. Biographical information borrowed from,
     EB 11th ed. (Cambridge: University Press, 1911), vol. IV, pp.
     897-905. Additional information borrowed from, Betty A. Toole, Ada,
     the Enchantress of Numbers (Mill Valley, California: Strawberry
     Press, 1992). Hereafter Enchantress.

[*5] Ada's Mother, Anne, suffered from a poor marriage which enabled her
     to focus most of her efforts on her daughter. As a result of her
     own interest in mathematics Anne saw fit that Ada would excel in
     the field also. Her husband once referred to her as the "Princess
     of Parallelograms." Lady Byron was a very strict mother and when it
     came to education it was priority one for her daughter. Information
     borrowed from, Joan Faith Forman, Ada: Aspirations and
     Accomplishments (California State University: MA Thesis, 1986).
     Hereafter Forman. Additional information provided by Teri Perl,
     Math Equals; Biographies of Women Mathematicians (Menlo Park,
     California: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1978). Hereafter
     Math Equals.

[*6] Ibid.

[*7] Ibid.

[*8] Ibid.

[*9] Ibid.

[*10] Enchantress.

[*11] Ada's horse's names were Slyph, Dubby, Flirt, and Tam O'Shanter. She
      also had racing horses by the names of Flying Dutchman, Voltigeur,
      and Teddington. This information was collected from, Enchantress.

[*12] Letter to Dr. William King on Sunday March 9, 1834 from Ada Byron.
      Letter borrowed from Enchantress, p. 53.

[*13] Letter to Arabella Lawrence Sunday July 25, 1830. Letter borrowed
      from Enchantress, p. 41.

[*14] Letter to Dr. William Frend on March 15, 1834. Letter borrowed
      from Enchantress, p. 54.

[*15] Letter to Dr. William Frend on March 15, 1834. Letter borrowed
      from Enchantress, p. 54.

[*16] Letter to Sophia Frend February 11, 1829. Letter borrowed from
      Enchantress, p. 40.

[*17] Hugh Montgomery's Geometry book was written by Paisley.

[*18] Letter from Ada to Lady Byron dated Friday November 22, 1828.
      Letter borrowed from Enchantress, p. 38.

[*19] Ada met Mary Somerville at the age of 17. Somerville was an
      amazing woman with many accomplishments including her translation
      of LaPlace's works into English. Somerville's text's were used at
      Cambridge. This information borrowed from, Betty's web article.

[*20] Quoted from, Math Equals.

[*21] Letter to Augustus De Morgan on Sunday September 13, 1840 stating
      Ada's problem with a homework assignment. Letter borrowed from
      Enchantress, p. 122.

[*22] Quote from, Math Equals.



   ww page 14
   Internet Humor from Anonameese(s)
  


Auto Mechanics?

   There were once a mechanical engineer, an electrical engineer and a
   computer software engineer riding around in an old Fiat 124. Not too
   much later the Italian car suddenly coughed, backfired, and then
   broke down completely. "It's probably a valve or a piston problem",
   said the mechanical engineer. "Nonsense", said the electrical
   engineer, "it's most likely a spark plug or the battery." At which
   point the software engineer declared, "I know. Lets all get out of
   the car and then get back in again!"


Greatest Fears Since I Got My Computer

   My new cyber girlfriend turns out to be my grandmother from Toldeo, O.

   Being reincarnated as a 386X33 with no modem.

   Receiving a call from Steve Case congratulating me for spending the
   most money ever in one month since the creation of AOL.

   Getting my posts poofed.

   Having a friend come over and see my other four screen names.

   Getting a thank you note from the electric company.

   While sending my gif, having the computer tell me it's too ugly to
   transmit!

   Finding out the gif I received from someone was taken thirty years
   ago.

   Coming back from vacation and to find that I was still connected to
   AOL.

   Seeing my cat dance on the keyboard and connect to the world wide
   web.

   Windows 95!


SOME HELPFUL HINTS

   If you're bidding for a job for UPS, don't send your bid by FedEx.

   If your computer says, Printer out of Paper, this problem cannot be
   solved by continuously clicking the OK button.

   No matter how much data you add to your laptop, it will not get
   heavier.

   A bad place to store your emergency backup diskette is on the
   underside of your desk drawer, secured by a large magnet.

   When the PC says, Insert diskette 2, don't do it immediately! Remove
   disk 1 first, even if you're sure you can make them both.

   When your PC says You Have Mail, don't go to the company mail room
   and look for a package.

   The French version of Netscape Navigator doesn't translate English
   language web pages into French.

   If you go to the computer store to buy a mousepad, you don't have to
   specify whether it's for a Windows or a Macintosh.


DILBERT'S LAWS OF WORK

   A pat on the back is only a few centimeters from a kick in the butt.

   Don't be irreplaceable, if you can't be replaced, you can't be
   promoted.

   You can go anywhere you want if you look serious and carry a
   clipboard.

   Eat one live toad the first thing in the morning and nothing worse
   will happen to you the rest of the day.

   When the bosses talk about improving productivity, they are never
   talking about themselves.

   If at first you don't succeed, try again. Then quit. No use being
   foolish about it.

   Everything can be filed under miscellaneous.

   Never delay the ending of a meeting or the beginning of a cocktail
   hour.

   To err is human, to forgive is not our policy.

   Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he/she is
   supposed to be doing.

   If you are good, you will be assigned all the work. If you are really
   good, you will get out of it.

   You are always doing something marginal when the boss drops by your
   desk.

   People who go to conferences are the ones who shouldn't.

   If it weren't for the last minute, nothing would get done.

   When you don't know what to do, walk fast and look worried.

   When confronted by a difficult problem you can solve it more easily
   by reducing it to the question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle
   this?"

   No matter how much you do, you never do enough.



   ww page 17
   The Controversial Cookies.Txt!
  

                          Cookies in the Oven
                   Copyright 1996 by Daniel Christle



Last month we discussed some of the issues related to marketing on the
Internet. That is, the ability of marketers to compile lists from forms,
newsgroup postings and cookies. It is the seemingly innocuous
cookies.txt file I want to discuss with emphasis upon the pros and cons
surrounding this controversial file.

For those of you who don't know what a cookie file does, it is simply an
encrypted file that allows a web site to store information about you on
your computer. That's right, - on *your* computer! Many examples abound
about the use of cookies but the two best I can think of are shopping
carts and personalizations. Shopping carts are used when you visit an
online mall such as the Internet Shopping Mall and you add products you
wish to purchase to a shopping cart before you go to checkout to
finalize your purchase. That shopping cart is actually a cookie file on
your system that tracks your purchases for the web site. Personalizing a
web site, which you can do at either Netscape's home page or MSN's home
page is done with the use of cookies. In fact any site that can greet
you personally is using cookies to tell it who is visiting. These are
just two examples of the many exciting things that can be accomplished
with cookies.

In the age of information where knowledge is power, marketing efforts
are under way to build a profile about you. They want to know your
tastes, interests and anything else about you so you can be marketed to
effectively. In that particular race, the cookie is just another tool.

Given all the neat things that can be done with cookies why are they so
controversial? The fact that they even exist leaves no doubt that
another computer can gain access to your system without your knowledge
or, for that matter, permission. This can leave some people a little
unnerved. After all you do keep many personal things on your computer.
In actual fact the threat for unwanted access is higher for corporate
users than home users. The corporate arena has much more at stake in
terms of valuable data than my check book or credit card account does.
Cookies are also controversial because of the information they provide
to marketing firms. Everywhere you go, on the web, use of cookies will
leave a trail of where you've been that gives marketing companies all
kinds of information about you. This is not necessarily as bad as it may
seem. The information will tell them what you like to see and how many
times you have been to specific web sites. However the temptation for
abuse is also present. Only time will really tell if access to this file
will lead to abuse of the information it provides.

The good news about cookies is that your browser will only send a cookie
file to the server that it came from. Further, the server can't tell
what other cookies have been placed on your system by other servers. In
this way you are somewhat protected from a server getting misleading
data about your surfing habits. In fact the cookie file is but a text
file that is a store house for up to 255 characters of information. Most
cookie files are used to help enhance the sites they come from by
providing the webmaster information about what people like to see and
what is not interesting to you. The data that cookies provides can be
useful to plan for the functionality and attractiveness of the site.

The bad news is that cookie files can be used to store your credit card
number if a server instructed it to do so. The fact of that matter is
that it would actually be more secure than your emailing your credit
card number across the Internet. Most sites would rather you enter this
information into a form and then store it in a database with your order
where they can more easily and securely track the information.

A bigger problem is when your private information can be manipulated
and/or used against you. An example in the extreme would be if you
visited a number of sites that advertise alcohol (and lets face it some
of those beer companies have great web sites) and you end up on a list
that your insurance company purchases. The list compiled from a variety
of Internet sites shows your name as someone who frequents sites that
promote alcohol, or at the least as someone who is a prime prospect for
alcohol sales. They raise your premiums on a profile that has been built
about you based upon the sites you visit on the Internet.

Someone assumes this is an accurate profile and never bothers to speak
with you to understand why you are interested in this type of site, and
then acts upon this erroneous assumption. This leaves you in the
position of defending yourself, or at least negotiating from a
disadvantage against data which is in fact true but does not accurately
represent your habits. This scenario may never happen but the door has
been opened. This is not that far fetched a possibility. Just ask anyone
who has been victimized by an inaccurate credit report.

So with this in mind how do you go about protecting yourself? The answer
is really to use common sense. With Netscape and Internet Explorer you
can set your options so that you are warned before your browser accepts
a cookie. This is a good exercise to try as you will be amazed at how
many sites use cookies as you surf the net.

Never give out your credit card number other than when you are using a
secure site. If you are prone to shopping on the Internet, and a few of
us are, make sure you track your expenses and reconcile them to your
statements. If the unthinkable happens you are much more likely to get
help from your financial institution if you do. Only give a site the
information you want them to have - not everybody needs your home phone
number or address. It is always a good idea to ask yourself why they
want the information before you submit it. If it is a marketing or
support based site then the answer is obvious. If there is no mention of
sales or follow up on the site then they are really suspect as a site
that sells names. As I have said before you are only as anonymous as
you want to be.

In the end the cookies.txt file on your hard disk doesn't have to be a
danger to you or your computer. It can help enhance your travels across
the World Wide Web by personalizing sites and letting webmasters
increase the usefulness of their websites. The worst thing about the
cookie file is that it does, in fact, prove that your hard disk can be
accessed and if a server is properly configured and they are really
motivated, that information could be used against you. By using common
sense about the kind of information you provide, you will be able to
kick up your heels and enjoy your travels.


                             =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Dan Christle is actively involved in the Winnipeg PC Users Groups and
can be found regularly on the Ilink network. He is employed in sales for
Link Logistics an ISP which provides online services to the trucking
industry. Dan is a regular WindoWatch contributor.



   ww page 16
  A Framework for Debate on Electronic Privacy
  

                       Finding the Middle Ground
                    Copyright 1996 by Lois Laulicht


It is impossible to ignore either the newest cyberspace frontier, that
of electronic commerce, or the profound impact its promise has had upon
the Internet community. The intense and rapid changes which have come,
have also spawned new and sophisticated tools creating far reaching and
permanent consequence. Legitimate fears of invasion of privacy have come
to the fore because many have felt under attack and see their electronic
bailiwick slipping away and changing in unacceptable ways.

Regulars to the super highway are being forced to look at these new, to
this environment at least, challenges to both personal privacy as well
as perceived attacks upon constitutional rights. Large numbers of
Internet newcomers are raising the economic stakes while firmly
establishing and integrating both business and traditional net activity
into the mainstream society. Fears of creeping federal control seem to
overshadow valid concerns of defense of unpopular or dissenting opinion,
the protection of minority groups and safety of our children, along with
the very heart of one's electronic life, the sanctity of one's personal
computer. Defining the parameters of right and wrong become difficult
when trying to get a handle on conflicting streams of concern, - how
they differ and where they are similar. Indeed these emotionally charged
issues are often intertwined and imprecisely defined making it even
more difficult to limit the scope of this turf for much needed and
objective debate.

Certainly, we can all agree that ours is a democracy which regularly
accommodates itself to the conflicting and often contradictory needs of
its people. To oversimplify, will it become necessary to rank order
priorities between respecting an individual's freedoms i.e. speech,
dissent, press; against those which protect the public at large and
restrain potential excesses of law enforcement?

There already exists a body of American law which deals with most of the
issues under discussion. However, we must remember the international
complexity of the Internet and that our Congress has only the power to
legislate for the US while our courts may only interpret for our
population! In any case, existing law doesn't appear to fit, - to some
at least. For whatever the reasons, probably the free wheeling character
of the Internet, that which is appropriate for the greater society is
not being implemented in an even handed way in terms of Internet crime.
For some, basic issues of privacy and freedom come to light after the
fact as an expose of alleged law enforcement abuse or the other
unacceptable extreme, of locking the door after crimes have already
occurred. The Internet, at least that part of the Internet which is
based in the United States, is not the equivalent of a duty free shop.
The laws which apply to the greater American society apply to the
American Internet as well. That is our premise!

Those of us familiar with Internet tools are acutely aware of the ease
to steal information of a private nature from a surfing computer. The
targeted information potentially can range from financial information
for illicit use like credit card numbers or bank IDs to quite legal
appropriation of data base information for marketing purposes. We may
dislike the reselling of postal mailing lists as much as we abhor the
exchange of electronically gathered data. Neither, however, is against
the law. As marketing has been seen as a driving force on the Internet,
the profit motive give Internet based companies sufficient economic
reason to reach you. One thing is certain however! As the world gets
smaller, degradation of privacy increases.

Those who are a part of the online world have seen the darker side of
human behavior surface. People throw out their manners as flame wars get
out of hand, sometimes escalating into threats when opinions sharply
differ. A recent issue of Internet World (October 1996, p. 12) showed
the publication of a letter under the title of The Wrong Spirit. The
author of the letter tells how she had to file a report with the FBI
after receiving death threats via the Internet. These threats upon her
person were an outcome of opinions which markedly differed from those of
several lurkers in Buddhist and Meditation Usenet groups. An extreme
example? Perhaps not! Hate groups abound off and on the Internet.
Threats are a form of intimidation and control.


Who cares:

Ordinary citizens who don't break the law are concerned that their
individual rights are being finessed away to deal with the bigger issues
of apprehending criminals and making profit. On one hand they feel that
law enforcement must be allowed to do their work and that the society
and its children must be protected.

Nonetheless, they worry for ordinary folks who suffer when the law fails
to protect them from quite legal, it appears, invasions of privacy. As
this applies to business, some say they would rather not have government
regulate commerce any more than it already has. It is disturbing to
discover that a company knows more about you than it should, but is it
against the law? Does telephone or email harassment by business eager to
sell goods and services any less an infringement upon privacy than
benign(?) electronic snooping into your computer system?

An unusual coalition of the liberal left and conservatives has emerged,
each with quite differing agendas and supported in political terms by
incompatible groups of people. As a result, the skewing of the debate to
the polar extreme has left the middle ground almost without proponents
or perhaps more precisely, without an articulated position. Most of us
have learned experientially that there must be protection of the many
where consensus of goals and benefits are inclusive. This middle ground
has become elusive in the midst of heated rhetoric leaving little room
for common sense approaches to ameliorate extreme views. Attitudes of
"what is right for us is right for you" or "our view is the only view
that counts - please don't express yourself" seem to prevail.


The Internet Community:

This new social and technological phenomena has grabbed the attention of
many for both legal and illegal activities. This mini society has been
described as an anarchy that has been separated from the main stream of
the society both by choice of its citizens who frequent its pages, news
groups and chat rooms and because of the specialized knowledge necessary
to initially gain access.

The language of the Internet is computereze, be it spoken in English,
German or Japanese. It is also tilted toward white Anglo-Saxon males
under forty. That is rapidly changing as access becomes more easily
achieved by other nationals, women and minority groups, less affluent
citizens, and those with less formal education. Because of the
ethnocentric character of the Internet (WASP) their values appear to
dominate during discussions relating to freedom of speech and the
Internet. The Internet erupted into a blaze of blue ribbons protecting
free speech after enactment of the Communications Decency Act which was
subsequently set aside by two federal judges. This Act would have
decreed undefined indecent material illegal. For example, any town
council could try to keep local library users off the Internet because
of their generalized fear of unspecified indecent material. They define
indecency as opposed to definitions created by the existing body of law,
the Constitution and precedent, the rulings of judges for over 200
hundred years.

Federal law enforcement has legitimate concerns and obligations. The
Internet can be a very anonymous society, and as a result, has also
become a place for criminals of all stripes to hide their activities.
These include political extremists like neo Nazis and Skin Heads who
organize and recruit members in order to disseminate their views and
activities all buried under the guise of innocuous mail and
conversation. There are garden variety crimes of drug trafficking, money
laundering, bank robbery of the white collar variety, gambling and book
making; pornography, and sexual harassment. There have been allegations
that pedophiles have lured children (a situation commonly referred to as
trolling) into situations where minors have been abused and worse.

We know that recipes for bombs can be found, computer viruses freely
distributed and that fringe groups functioning on the edge of the law
advocating sedition have operated with impunity until quite recently. It
is also of note that one must first be intent on finding such
information. While it is freely available it doesn't just land in your
computer by mistake!


Marketing and Sales:

Although presently no one is making any real money on the Internet,
everyone knows that the potential for profit is there. Ordinary business
is present and growing. While perceived as beneficial by many, it is
damned by others. Think of any commercial enterprise and it can be found
on the Internet. This presence has also attracted shady elements which
have traditionally profited on the fringes or illegally at the expense
of legitimate business. As in the mainstream society, the Internet
provides a place for the unethical tricks of marketing and sales; the
reselling of private information for monetary gain be it lists with
email addresses tied to social security numbers to selling useless or
nonexistent goods to the unwary. After all, with the possible exception
of software, you really can't see, touch or smell what you are buying.

Our computer systems are vulnerable to those who chose to profit from
our private information if we do not insist that software be constructed
to protect us from very common intrusions and sometimes benign snooping.

A case in point is a file called cookies.txt. This small file, which is
stored on your hard disk, is used by browsers to help store information
about how you want to access a certain page when you go back for another
visit. The information it contains is used by the web server that stores
the page you are visiting and can detect this file on your system
reading information from it. It can also be used to store credit card
information for sites that require per use payment. In this issue there
is an article by Dan Christle describing what a cookie file can do. Some
of us however, are sufficiently concerned about the open access to ones
computer provided by cookies that we have tagged this file as read only.
This prevents another computer from writing information onto your hard
disk. From the point of view of this writer, the less that is available
to a curious web page owner, the better I like it!


Sovereignty, International Commerce, Terrorism and Encryption:

One of the more compelling arguments for giving the FBI and other
federal law enforcement agencies more power to tap phone lines or search
and seize potentially incriminating evidence, is the threat of
international and domestic terrorism. We have seen the murder of victims
who committed no offense except to be in the wrong place at the wrong
time. We have also seen federal authorities abuse power in the name of
solving crime. Somewhere between this pair of facts we must find a
method to protect our citizens and bring perpetrators of heinous crime
to justice.

There has been the claim by the federal establishment that encryption of
international messages and documents give felons an edge that cannot be
neutralized using ordinary means. Many of us are very nervous about
handing over duplicate encryption keys to anyone particularly any arm of
the government.

To add to this complicated mix, the Canadian Police Chief Association
recently announced their intention to push for laws that will govern the
Internet. The anarchist demeanor and reputation of the Internet is
something many governments want to control as more of their compatriots
go online. But how does a nation control an entity that is multinational
in nature? Do most governments have either the technical or monetary
resources to control the Internet with unilateral agreements limited to
enforcement using authorities such as Interpol? With control or
government regulation does this mean that, weak as they may be, attempts
to self police the Internet is dead along with the free flow of
information?

We can legislate behavior and rules of conduct for ourselves but for no
other societies. Although the Internet is a creature of the American
Defense establishment it has long since ceased to be a creature of just
America. Further, there exist enormous barriers to protect American
corporations abroad short of unilateral agreements and enforcement.
American corporations claim huge losses of revenue as a result of theft
of their property. However, one has to note in passing, that while at
home these very same corporations lobby for regulation free
environments. The Clinton Administration advocates encryption and
demands a copy of the key to protect the peoples interests at home and
abroad. This sends a mixed message and Internet denizens retort with
accusations and fears of Big Brother. Issues of freedom of speech and
protection under the law are like being a little bit pregnant with
everyone getting very nervous and looking hard to slap a paternity suit
on almost anyone who might fit the profile. Big Brotherism is always a
fear in a society that remembers the reality of a Hitler and Stalin and
recently the bombings of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City and the
World Trade Center in New York City. When does the public interest kick
in and take precedence or add weight to questions of freedom and
privacy. Does the government have the right to inspect our baggage and
get profiles on each of us before access is granted onto a commercial
flight? Or conversely would a government be negligent if it didn't take
steps to protect its people from both International and homegrown
terrorism?

The drug business parallels the Internet. Both are International in
nature and operate outside of government control. Each government has
its own laws to deal with drug crimes and we will probably see each
country try to initiate their own laws for regulating their own little
piece of the Internet.

In the United States, drug busting justifies all sorts of privacy
invasion stretching the limits of authorized and non-authorized wire
tapping; from garbage picking, to issues of tax and banking records, to
exaggerating the truth to a judge in order to get a search warrant. In
value terms, drug busting is the starkest example of our national
dilemma. The huge amount of money changing hands and being laundered has
to exceed the gross volume of sales by the automobile industry. The
consequence of this huge international money machine negatively effects
the entire world with examples too numerous to mention here.

For law enforcement to have a crack at controlling these activities, law
enforcement must have the tools to do so. Here lies the crux of the
dilemma as it relate to regulating the Internet. Are the laws and
enforcement tools which now exist, sufficient? In terms of the drug
scene many would agree that we have asked law enforcement to engage in
very dangerous work without giving them adequate tools. We know that the
Internet is being heavily used by the drug industry. So in order to give
the government the ability to police the illegal and dangerous
international drug interests are we opening the door to police the
Internet risking more infringements upon our rights?


A Final Thought... the Unhappy Accident:

Very recently I had an experience which was an eye opener! No one tried
to do me harm, but effectively, a legitimate request for information and
my willingness to cooperate, had the potential for doing just that! Like
many homepage owners, a visit to a much respected computer industry
publication triggered a request for my purchasing habits. I wanted the
free hard copy subscription to their publication so I complied. It was a
detailed interview which took place early in the fall and I thought
nothing more of it.

Very recently I decided that I had to follow up on mail coming to the
magazine indicating that many links were out of date. This had been
brought about as a result of our change of ISPs. After doing several key
searches, notifying web masters of necessary updates I decided to close
down this boring housekeeping chore with a search on my name.

My boredom changed to shock! Imagine my reaction to have that entire
secure interview scroll down the screen! All of it!

I was very lucky because this is a reputable company that actively
worked with me to clean up the mess. In a matter of several days the
problem was solved. However there remain two issues which should be
mentioned. There was no malice in this case on either side. I dread
thinking about what a less decent outfit might have done or more
importantly, not done. It is fair to assume that they too consider
themselves fortunate that I am not a litigious person. However there
remain questions of liability and establishing loss for everyone who
regularly does business on the Internet.

It appears, according to their logs, that I was the only victim. The
hole is plugged and hopefully no one else emerges weeks from now. The
Internet does not function in a vacuum. When computers interact with
each other exchanging information to the physical world, potentially they 
can initiate real financial loss. Is that when we start paying closer
attention and attempt to reach working compromises?

We can readily see the possibilities of genuine exploitation for gain at
the local national level, that is the United States. The problems and
conflicts are real with no easy solutions. The ground rules for
acceptable international solutions are even harder to get a handle on.

These are but some of issues that need to be seriously examined and
vigorously discussed. People need to voice their concerns before they
are drowned in the noise of commercialism and politicking. And finally,
creating solutions to these dilemmas are only as good as the behavior to
engage in civil debate and flexible problem solving.

I want to thank both Leonard Grossman and Dan Christle for reading parts
of this essay. The point of view taken is obviously my own and my
responsibility.


                             =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Lois Laulicht is the Editor of WindoWatch



   ww page 17
    The WindoWatch Art Gallery
  


Paul Kinnaly's "Sunset": he says, "harkens back to Close Encounters of
the Third Kind"

Herb Chong's "Lost Island"

These two original works from Paul Kinnaly and Herb Chong can be viewed
and downloaded in the PDF edition of WindowWatch, available from the
WindoWatch home page, http://www.windowatch.com/. Look for PDF File -
Part A (wwin210a.pdf) or Zipped PDF file - Part A (wwin210a.zip).



   ww page 18
   The Last Word                                    A WindoWatch Feature
  

                  Closing the Worker Technology Gap II
                    Copyright 1996 by Ben M. Schorr


Before we go back to the details of the computer training we're putting
in place, it's important to understand what computer equipment is
presently in use and the operating systems we run.

Our system configuration is quite typical of most small and medium size
business establishments. We have no Win31 boxes but rather fifty-three
DOS PCs, five Win95 boxes and four Netware Servers, one using 3.11 and
three 3.12. We also have about fifteen dial-in users running everything
from DOS, Win3.1 and Win95 all using PCAnywhere to connect through our
Comm_Server running Netware Connect. Our DOS boxes are all diskless
386SX-16s, running DOS 6.22, WordPerfect Office 3.0, and WordPerfect for
DOS 5.1+. Additionally, we have a small assortment of Castelle Print/Fax
servers and a couple of scanners.

Our upgrades and acquisitions will move the system to two or three
P6-200 WinNT Servers, keeping one of the Netware Servers, and replacing
all of the in-house computers with P6-180s running Win95.

Getting back to the main event, last month I described the first three
phases of my training program here at Damon Key. They are:

1.  Educational Flyers which are distributed in the employee lounge.
2.  Computer Periodicals strategically placed for increased circulation.
3.  Lunch-Time classes on computer subjects.

Since last month, the weekly Educational Flyers, in particular, have
really taken off. There are now half-a-dozen people in the office who've
requested to have copies of the latest flyer sent directly to their
office so that they can have their own copy to keep and refer to.

Also, we trained nineteen people in our Introduction to the Internet
class. Among them, are people who have long been considered computer
phobic by our IS staff.

The next parts of our training program are still to come. They fall into
three basic sections:

1.  Train the Trainers / Develop Mentors
2.  In-Depth classes.
3.  On-Line Education.

The first section, Train the Trainers, is where I have put together some
intermediate and advanced classes for the people in our firm who will be
expected to field questions from our users. The mentors include the
Systems Administrator, General Manager and the General Manager's
Assistant. These particular classes are geared more towards
troubleshooting and resolving issues for the user rather than teaching
the actual use of the software products. Even so, the mentors certainly
should be able to minimally use the software as well as troubleshoot
them.

The first "Train the Trainers" class will be on some of the
intermediate features of Win95. We'll talk about configuring Printers,
creating/managing shortcuts, the basics of the Network section of
Control Panel, an explanation of what the Registry is and other general
computer issues designed to help them help users. I don't expect that
they will be able to do heavy duty trouble shooting, but having them
available to solve the less complicated problems, like "How do I change
printers?" will remove some of the load from us.

An unexpected educational opportunity has arisen as a result of security
concerns from the directors. It became clear that there was a lot of
misinformation about computer viruses in circulation, so we've scheduled
a seminar and invited all interested parties to discuss the basics of
Computer Viruses: What they are, what they aren't, how you can get them,
and how you can't, and most important, simple precautions to take to
keep a system virus free. I'm hopeful that by the end of the class the
seven people who have already enrolled, will be better educated, less
fearful, and equipped to take intelligent precautions to stay
protected while not denying important services out of irrational fear.

The second section, In-Depth Classes, is where our Systems Administrator
will take small groups of end users and lead them through extensive
training in the actual, day to day, use of the software products we
primarily use. We hope that the entry into these classes will be eased
by our earlier efforts: Flyers, Magazines and Lunch Classes. Here we
will find out if the earlier measures were successful; our end users
should have a good base of knowledge and a positive comfort level with
which to start the In-Depth Classes.

These In-Depth Classes are designed to help users with general hands-on
Windows training. Topics include printing, opening files, using the Find
File features, desktop management, using the taskbar, cutting and
pasting as well as a tour of the main features of each product such as
spell checking, formatting, templates, macros, etc. By the time they
leave they should be equipped to handle their daily tasks using these
applications.

The third section, On-Line Education, is where we make available to our
users a Knowledge Base, FAQs and simple documents like our Educational
Flyers, on-line through their computers. We can then encourage them to
pursue their questions by reading these materials whenever possible.
Hopefully most of the common problems will be covered in the FAQ, and
answered with an easy procedure, so that our users can solve many of
their own problems without having to rely quite so heavily on the ISD
staff.

We also intend to carefully field questions that are answered in the
product manuals and evaluate why the question came in. Why didn't the
user get the answer from the manual themselves? Was the issue covered in
the manual? If it's a case of the manual being too difficult to
understand, then we'll attempt to rewrite the section in question and
post our edited version, along with the question, in the On-Line FAQ.

If it's a case of the manual having covered the issue but the writing
poor or unclear, or even too difficult for them to find the information
they need, then we'll try to create a FAQ with easy to use references to
page numbers. If a question comes up too often, we'll have to try to
organize a class session to address that specific issue.

As new people join the firm, we'll have to run them through the In-Depth
classes, point them to the On-Line materials and encourage other users
to help them get up to speed. This is expected to be one of our biggest
challenges - as new people come into the firm who do not have the
benefit of all of the preliminary education that our veteran users will
have.

Our goal in all of our training is to make the users as efficient as
possible. Along the way we want them to be self-sufficient when it comes
to dealing with computer problems or questions that are basic or can be
easily answered with reference materials. The ISD department should be
free to handle the complex technical issues, develop macros and
templates and be focused on upgrade and expansion issues.

Will we reach our goal? Only time will tell. I can say that in the three
months that we've been ramping up this program there has been a
noticeable increase in the computer savvy of our users. People who
barely saw past the keyboard and monitor can now explain, in basic
terms, what RAM is and what a GUI is. That increase in comfort and
knowledge is bound to pay dividends in efficiency, independence,
training and troubleshooting down the road.


                             =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Ben M. Schorr is the Director of Information Services, for now, for
Damon Key Bocken Leong Kupchak in Honolulu, Hawaii. Ben has been writing
the LASTWORD for several years and continues to give our readers his
unique perspective.even with a gorgeous lei around his neck.



   ww 

EDITORIAL

Editor:                             Lois B. Laulicht
Contributing Editor:                Herb Chong
Home Page Editor:                   Paul Kinnaly
Ascii Edition Editor:               Lin Sprague

Contributing Writers:               Vlad Balak, John M. Campbell,
                                    Dan Christle, Leonard Grossman,
                                    Gregg Hommel , David Kindle,
                                    Jerry Laulicht, Frank McGowan,
                                    Peter Neuendorffer, Jack Passarella,
                                    Jim Plumb, Linda Rosenbaum, Ben Schorr,
                                    and Paul Williamson


EDITORIAL BOARD                     Herb Chong, Gregg Hommel, Lois Laulicht,
                                    Paul Williamson, Paul Kinnaly

SUBMISSIONS and REQUESTS

Email :                             editor@windowatch.com
                                    lois.laulicht@channel1.com

                                    Editor: WindoWatch
                                    Valley Head, WV 26294

Submissions remain the intellectual property of the author.
Manuscripts will NOT be returned if not used.

Electronic File Access         All back issues are available from the
                               WindoWatch homepage. See Back
                               Issues or anonymous ftp site at
                               FTP://206.151.74.157
                               www.shareware.com - Search under the
                                     "All Windows" category
                               FTP>Simtel.Net/pub/simtel.net/win95/winwatch
                               FTP>coast.net/Simtel/Vendors.html

Comments, letters, and requests can be sent to: editor@windowatch.com


WindoWatch (c) 1994, 1995, 1996 all rights reserved, is the property of
Lois B. Laulicht and CCC of WV Valley Head, WV 26294


  
  Vol.2 No.10 ww End

