






                             W I N D O W A T C H








 WindoWatch            The Electronic Windows Magazine of the Internet
 Volume 1 No.6                                             August 1995











                        W H A T' S    I N S I D E




 WindoWatch                    The Electronic Magazine of the Intenet
 Vol.1  No.6                                              August 1995

 Editorial
 A Delphi Tutorial                                          Herb Chong
 HTML Shareware Tools..An Overview                        Paul Kinnaly
 Quarterdeck's Web Author * A Product Review           Jerome Laulicht
 More HTML...Authoring Tools                              Phil Leonard
 Microsoft's Internet Assistant                              Jim Plumb
 Bellying Up to the WEB for Fun and Profit               Lois Laulicht
 Search and Ye Shall Find-Maybe!                    Peter Neuendorffer
 Stanley Does Windows!                            Bob Miller's Stanley
 System Commander * A Product Review                  John M. Campbell
 Windows Aspect..A tutorial Part 5                        Gregg Hommel
 Is NetCruiser by NetCom in Your Future?                  Kyle Freeman
 Time and Chaos * A Product Review                       Frank McGowan
 Idiots-Redux                                               Bob Miller
 Super Programmer                                   Peter Neuendorffer
 A Brief History of the Computer                              Jim Gunn
 Confessions of a ModemJunkie                        Leonard  Grossman
 Why WinZip...A Retrospective                                   Bernie
 The Shareware Plug of the Month





        *               *               *               *               *

 WindoWatch                   The Electronic Windows Magazine of the Internet
 Volume 1  No. 6                                                  August 1995

                                 An Editorial

 The Electronic SuperHighway Evolving

 It's an International Flea Market in the making!  Let your fingers do the
 walking and let your modem carry you into the virtual yellow pages.  It
 can become the newest  edition of the Home Shopping Channel hawked by
 main line vendors of reputation and capital. As in life, the one thing we
 can count upon is change, and when on the Internet, change is very
 rapidly.  To some, unregulated change will lead to chaos while others
 equate regulation of the Internet with destruction of the Internet .

 My own evolving view is that if the Internet is going to shrivel and
 shrink, it will be of trite with commerce fueling the banal and
 commonplace.  There were those who warned us very early in the game that
 the demands and practices of  business was going to do in the Internet.
 It was this group who insisted that no advertising be allowed and
 probably invented the term spamming with commercialization in mind. The
 Web browser was born and they lost the good fight!

 Remember the great hope of television with the expectation of
 educational and cultural opportunities? TV became many things unpleasant
 but mostly it became boring and predictable!  Hence the birthing of
 cable.

 It's much too early to say that the Internet as we know it, is
 defenseless and is going to crumble. It's not too early to suggest that
 perhaps the Internet is not an Electronic Super highway but rather a
 short interstate with promising features like a very large international
 mall.  It must be our responsibility to protect users of the Internet
 from the hucksters, -of  sex,  sedition or stupidity, by speaking out.
 It is also our responsibility to understand that the Internet is going to
 change....many times, to meet the demands of the growing numbers of users
 who also have every right to quit and start their own.  At this writing,
 the Federal government has plans to do exactly that for itself and its
 agencies including State and local governments who wish to participate.

 There will undoubtedly be many highways with differing goals connected
 through  gateways each serving their own clientele.  As long as the
 Internet provides access to the many and seeks to continue its effort to
 disseminate information, it will have the vitality to fend off this
 upcoming assault with its familiar threat of the marketing of trite!




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 A Delphi Tutorial                                     A WindoWatch Feature


                   Building a Small Delphi Application

                      copyright 1995 by Herb Chong

 Borland's Delphi is one of the Windows programming tools being marketed
 as a Rapid Application Development (RAD) toolkit. You are supposed to be
 able to build applications faster with RAD systems than with traditional
 development tools like C and C++,  even with their spiffy new interfaces
 and IDEs.  What distinguishes a RAD tool from other quick, easy to use
 tool building environments like Visual Basic is that a RAD tool has much
 more power built into it from the beginning.  However, it's not enough to
 just be able to put together applications quickly. You have to be able to
 build applications that can solve tough, real-world problems quickly and
 efficiently. Visual Basic is great for prototyping look and feel, but as
 soon as you start to use it on larger projects, its limitations become
 painfully obvious.

 Code reuse is difficult, and speed just isn't there unless you write lots
 of DLLs or VBXs, defeating the whole point of going with Visual Basic in
 the first place. Visual Basic 4.0 promises to help with some of the group
 programming problems, but fundamentally, Visual Basic is not an object
 oriented programming language and that means you have to use components
 that you can't modify or derive from.

 In this tutorial, we're going to build a small Delphi application. It
 wont do much, mostly because if you need to work through tutorials,
 youre not ready to do much yet. The program is going to copy files from
 one place to another. That doesn't sound very hard, and it isnt. Writing
 this article took about four times as long as it did to write the
 program. But thats not the point. The point is to get you started with a
 small program that is just a little beyond the introductory tutorials in
 the Delphi manuals and into areas they don't cover.

 Getting Started

 Like all GUI tool building, when you program in Delphi, you need to think
 about what kind of interface you want for your program. Once you have
 your user interface worked out, much of the rest of the programming falls
 into place. It doesn't make the details any easier, but at least you have
 a better idea of where to start. Object oriented programming in general
 requires that you think much harder about how your application needs to
 work before you can begin coding.

 The interface I chose for this tutorial program is simple. The user sees
 either list and copy from one list to another. Each file list can be from
 files in the same directory or in different directories. For simplicity
 of programming, they can select only one file at a time. Figure 1 shows a
 screen shot of the finished program. (Note: all the screen shots for this
 article were done on Windows 95.) Well spend most of the time building
 this user interface appearance before actually writing any code. The
 finished program is only 129 lines of Object Pascal code, and most of it
 is generated by Delphi itself. With Delphi, you spend more time thinking
 about the problem than writing code.

 To get started, you need to create a directory for your new project. I
 like to keep all the work I do in separate directories under the \DELPHI
 subdirectory. I have one called \DELPHI\PER-SONAL and within it, I keep
 all my projects. So, create a directory where you want to keep this
 tutorial program and launch Delphi. If you have used Delphi before,
 youll come up with the last project you loaded. Since we are beginning a
 new project, click on File|New Project. It shows the Object Inspector, which
 lets you set object properties, and the main form for the program. Underneath
 it, just barely visible, is the Object Pascal code for the form. Now, save
 the project using File|Save Project As. Specify the name you want use for
 the first forms files. If you want to, give the project file a name too,
 like "tutorial.dpr".

 Before we do anything else, run the program to see what a completely
 empty form looks like. Press the F9 key, or use Run|Run to compile the
 code and launch the program and you get a completely empty default form.

 Although it is hard to tell because of the default color scheme in
 Windows 95, there are several undesirable characteristics of this form.
 The first is that there is a maximize button. This sample application
 doesnt resize its controls, so allowing the user to click on maximize is
 not a good idea. The other thing is that resizing borders are on the form
 too. They also allow the user to change the size of the form window. We
 need to get rid of both. You do this changing the form's properties using
 Object Inspector.

 The top drop-down listbox shows which component you have selected. In
 this case, it's Form1 and it is of type Tform1. We need to change the
 border icons and the border style flags. If you click on BorderStyle,
 youll see that there is a drop-down listbox of possible settings. Change
 the BorderStyle property to bsSingle. The   +  character next to the
 BorderIcons property signals that there are several settings grouped
 together under this property. If you double-click on the property name,
 you will see that there are three sub-properties.

 The system menu is the icon shape on the left of the title-bar (this is
 new in Windows 95). The minimize and maximize buttons are on the right,
 next to the close button new in Windows 95. Its OK to minimize this
 application, but not to maximize it.  Click on the biMaximize property
 and change its value to False. The remaining thing to do is to change the
 form Caption property.

 This is the text that will appear in the title bar of your form. Once you
 do this, run the program again and see what it looks like.

 Well, there you have it, a complete Delphi application that does nearly
 nothing. You havent entered or changed any code, and you have a full
 fledged application. What you have done is change properties for a form
 so that it runs the way we need this application to run. It prevents the
 user from doing things that it's not prepared to handle. The next step is
 to put the controls onto the form. Getting the Visual Appearance Right

 Once the basic form properties have been set, its time to draw the
 controls on the form itself. No code need be attached at first. The basic
 visual appearance needs to be right first. To add controls to a form, you
 need to use the Delphi main Menu bar. The three groups of buttons on the
 left allow you to manage Delphi files, projects, and debugging using the
 integrated debugger. In the middle and right portions of the window are
 the Visual Component Library components, arranged into groups by tabs. The
 controls we need at first are from the Standard tab, which is shown high-
 lighted in gray. If you hold your mouse pointer over anyone of the icons
 in the tabbed bar, you will see the name of the component.

 Find and click on the Panel component. The icon indents. This tells you
 that when you drag the mouse cursor on the form, you will be creating a
 panel where you drag. Make sure the size is approximately what is shown
 in the screen shot as we need to fit some buttons and another one of these
 later.

 Although this is a fine looking panel, it's not got the look we want.
 Click once on the panel. The Object Inspector now changes to show the
 properties for the panel. The panel is colored such that it appears to be
 popped out from the form. This isnt what we want. Instead, we want the
 panel border to look like an indentation into the form with the surface
 of the panel the same height as the rest of the form itself. To make
 these changes you need to change the BevelInner and BevelOuter
 properties. BevelInner needs to be bvRaised and BevelOuter needs to be
 bvLowered.

 In our application, each part of the file selector has a way to select
 the drive, directory, and file that the user wants to copy. We need to
 put these controls into the panel we just created. These components are
 located under the System tab.

 We will need the DriveComboBox, DirectoryListBox, and FileListBox
 components. They also have to be grouped together with the panel that we
 just created. Make sure that the panel is selected. Then select each type
 of component and create them inside the panel.

 Select the panel and drag it left and right to make sure that the other
 three components are enclosed properly by the panel control. If any are
 not, moving the panel will leave them behind. If this happens, cut the
 component using Edit|Cut, select the panel, and then Edit|Paste it. This
 makes sure that the component is contained within the panel. Make sure to
 size the FileListBox component slightly taller than half way so that the
 panel's caption is hidden. The other thing to do is to change the panels
 caption to an empty string.

 Once you have all the components arranged properly, select the panel and
 do Edit|Copy. Then click on the form so that it is selected, and the do
 Edit|Paste. Youll end up with another panel and set of controls pasted
 on top of your other panel and controls. See Figure 12. Click on the
 group of controls and drag it into position on the right hand side of the
 form.

 Click on the drop down listbox in Object Inspector and scroll thru the
 list. You should see two of everything except the form itself in the
 list. These are all the components in your project. Their component names
 are based on the type of component they are. For a project of this size,
 it makes little difference what you name your components because there
 are so few of them. For a larger project, you will give them more
 descriptive names that identify the purpose of the control better. For
 this project, we will leave the control names alone. After we add four
 buttons we are done with the visual appearance of the program. But-tons
 are located on the Standard tab of the Visual Component Library tab bar.
 Select it and add four buttons from top to bottom, arranged as in Figure 1.
 The easiest thing to do is to create one button of the right size and clone
 it three times by copying the first and pasting it three times.

 The button captions arent right, so youll need to edit them. The top
 button is named About..., the next one is Copy >>, the next Copy <<,
 and the final one Exit!. Make these changes and save your work.
 Click on File|Save Project and make sure that the project is saved into
 your working directory. Then press F9 and run your program. If you did
 everything as you should have, the application should pop up with a
 window.


 Experiment with the program as it's running. You'll see that you can
 click on all the buttons and controls and some things happen. What
 happens isnt what needs to happen yet, but you can scroll the listboxes,
 select things, and see buttons go down when you click on them. The visual
 interface is done. The only visual aspect left to do is to not highlight
 the Copy buttons unless there is a file selected in the corresponding
 FileListBox controls. To do that requires writing Object Pascal Code.
 That's what we will do next.

 Making It Work for Real

 All the visual interface design that you did before was fairly easy and
 frequently represents most of the design time in a complicated
 application. For this application, it probably represents about half the
 time if you are familiar with Delphi. The other half of the time will be
 spent putting in the right code to make the application work. The first
 thing well do is to make the Exit! button work. You can do this by
 double-clicking on the Exit! button. Up comes the code editor window.
 Once it appears, you can edit the code. The code for the Exit! button
 consists of one statement, Close;.

 In the same way, you will add the code for the About button. Bring the
 form design window to the front again and double click on it. Add the
 statement to implement the About dialog. Save the project and run the
 program again. You should be able to click on the About button and see
 the message box. You should also be able to click on the Exit! button to
 exit the program.

 Well! It's getting closer to being something real. The next thing to do
 is to make the drive, directory, and file components work together. If
 you tried them in the version of the program you have now, you will see
 that changing the drive letters or directories did not have any effect on
 each other nor the file listbox. Were going to add some code to make
 them work together. Double click respectively on the left DriveComboBox,
 and DirectoryListBox and add the lines of code to your project.

 Do the same for the DriveComboBox and DirectoryListBox on the right. You
 should be adding the lines of code as shown in Figure 19. Save the
 project and run the program again. This time, when you change drives or
 select a new directory, the file listbox contents should change. Hard to
 believe it, but we are almost done.

 Look at Figure 1 again, where we show the finished application. Notice
 that the Copy buttons are both grayed out. This happens whenever there
 arent any files selected in either file listbox. If a file is selected,
 the appropriate Copy button is supposed to become enabled. If a file is
 selected in each listbox at the same time, both buttons are supposed to
 be enabled. To do this, your application has to both initialize the
 buttons to be both grayed, but also to enable and disable the buttons as
 appropriate.

 First, lets get the button states started properly. To do this, you need
 to modify one of the forms events, the OnCreate event. Select the form
 and bring the Object Inspector window to the front. You will see all the
 forms properties by default. If you click on the Events tab at the
 bottom of the Object Inspector window, you will see the events list.
 Note that no events have event handlers assigned to them. This
 means that every event that the form receives is handled by a default
 event handler.

 Double click on the empty value next to the OnCreate event. You will
 bring up a code editor window with a new method. Insert the lines of code
 shown in Figure 21. Once again, save the project and run it. You should
 see both the Copy buttons disabled.

 So, now we have disabled the buttons at startup. How do we enable them?
 Well, the buttons should be enabled when a file is selected in the
 correct file listbox window. Click on the left file listbox to select it.
 Now, in Object Inspector, double click on the OnClick event for the
 component. Add the code for FileListBox1as and do the same for the right
 file listbox. Save the project and run the program again. The Copy buttons
 should enable themselves when you selected a file in their connected file
 listbox. In Figure 1, each file listbox has the ShowGlyph property set to
 True so that an icon appears next to each file name identifying the file
 type. Can do that at this point in the program. Note that when you make this
 change to the properties for each listbox, the contents change right away
 so that you can see the effect of the change.

 The only thing left to do now is to make the copy buttons actually do
 something. Once again, you will be modifying the default OnClick
 handlers, but for the two Copy buttons. Double click on the event
 handlers list to create and add code shown to the code in the edit window.

 Since the copy operation is the same for both buttons, but the strings
 used to decide which to copy where are different, Ive decided to use a
 simple helper function to do the real copying operation. CopyFile takes
 two string parameters as input, the file to copy and the directory to
 copy it into. Scroll upwards in the code edit window until you get to the
 section of code for private declarations. Add the function forward
 declaration.

 Now you have to add the code to actually do the copying. Now is where we
 do something sneaky. Object Pascal doesnt have a function that copies a
 file from one place to another, and neither does the Windows API,
 strictly speaking. However, there is an obscure function seldom used by
 most people which does do file copying, and has a bonus function, it
 uncompresses files from normal Windows setup disks! Its called LZCopy,
 and you need to add LZExpand to your uses clause in the form.

 Because it is a Windows API function, it cant use Object Pascal strings
 directly. Well have to convert the strings to Windows API null
 terminated strings. Delphi has functions to do this. Add the appropriate
 procedures shown to your code. The code allocates several structures
 and variables needed to interface with the Windows API. It then converts
 the name of the input file and opens it using the LZOpen API call.. Next,
 it builds the output file name and opens it too. Then it calls LZCopy to
 do the real file copying. Finally, it closes the files and exits. Thats
 all there is to it.

 Summary

 Although it took me about an hour to research, write, and debug the
 program, it took more than 4 hours to write this article. Most of it was
 spent getting the screen shots right and really describing all that I
 did. If I was writing this program without the need to prepare for a
 tutorial, it would have taken less than an hour to have a completely
 working implementation. I'm not a Delphi expert by any means. I am a good
 Windows programmer and know what things are supposed to do. I probably
 spent less time designing the program than most people would because I
 have designed many things like this before. Delphi is extremely easy to
 use for people who are familiar with Visual Basic. Its a bigger change
 for people who have been using Borland Pascal or any of the C++
 programming tools. Even, so, with only a few hours experimentation, you
 can become very productive in Delphi.

 For Further Development

 The program we built was a small one. It and this tutorial supplements
 the introductory material included with Delphi. If you want to extend
 this program to make it into a truly useful utility, you need to make the
 window and controls resizable, and perhaps even include multicolumn
 listboxes for the file list display. You can also put in checks for
 copying over the same file name, renaming on conflicts, selecting
 multiple files, and so on. There are dozens of things that could be done
 to enhance it. I'll leave most of them up to you. This small program is
 the beginnings of a file manager/viewer application, much like what ended
 up being called File Manager in Windows.

 Herb Chong has many credits in his vita. It's always a treat to carry his
 work because he understands what is needed to communicate and teach. His
 many contributions include articles in Windows Sources, The Cobb Group's
 Inside Microsoft Windows and of course, WindoWatch. Herb is the WindoWatch
 Contributing Editor.




                                        ww



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             An  Overview  of  HTML  Shareware  Tools

                    <TITLE>HTML Editors</TITLE>

                  copywrite 1995  by Paul Kinnaly

 HyperText Markup Language is, in simple terms, the "programming language"
 of the World Wide Web. But don't let that reference to programming scare
 you away. HTML is really very simple and straightforward. All it does is
 "markup" an ASCII text file with "tags" which tell a Web Browser -like
 Mosaic or Netscape- how to display the file.

 Let's look at a quick example. Here is a very simple HTML tagged file:

 =====================================================
 <TITLE> A Simple HTML File</TITLE>
 <H1>This is a Level One Heading</H1>
 This is the first paragraph.
 <P>And this is the second.
 =====================================================

 The HTML tags are enclosed in brackets like this: < > and will not be
 displayed by a browser while the remaining text is what will show on the
 screen. Displayed in a browser, the above HTML text would look something
 like this:

 =====================================================

 A Simple HTML File

 This is a Level One Heading

 This is the first paragraph.

 And this is the second.

 =====================================================

 More complex markups can allow the browser to display lists, definitions,
 forms, pictures, etc. As very specific standardized tags must be used to
 generate each of these elements, the casual user might be discouraged
 from trying to write HTML. But, with the explosive growth of the Internet
 and the escalating interest in the Web, increasing numbers of people want
 the ability to create their own Home Page - either for personal or
 corporate use. To ease that process, a growing number of commercial,
 shareware, and freeware tools have appeared. These tools relieve the user
 of much of the burden of learning long lists of tags and markup rules.

 HTML tools fall into three broad categories. The first of these are
 "template tools". These packages are designed to work with a specific
 Windows-based word processing program. Typically, they act as an
 "add-on", integrating themselves with the program, providing additional
 menu selections, and using many of the host program's text formatting and
 display capabilities. Currently, the vast majority of such tools are
 designed to work with Microsoft's Word 6.0 although template tools for
 Word 2.0, AmiPro, and WordPerfect also exist.

 The second category of tools are the "stand-alone" editors. These tools
 are actually mini-word processors. They have basic text editing
 capabilities, and their menus and button bars concentrate on providing
 the user with a quick and easy method of "marking up" text.

 The third category are the converters; these are usually mini-programs
 that read in a file in one format and output a file in another. While
 similar features are part of several of the Word 6 template tools, these
 programs are generally designed to work with files that are not in a
 specific word processor format. Most are based on converting from Rich
 Text Format or PostSript to HTML.

 The primary focus of this article will be on the second category of HTML
 tools, the stand-alone editors. Other articles, in this and future issues
 of WindoWatch, will highlight some of the other HTML tools available.

 Most of the standalone editors allow you to import -or type- a plain text
 document. Using the menus or buttons available in the specific program,
 you then highlight a given section of text and mark it in accordance
 with your menu selection. In the simple example at the beginning of this
 article, for example, typing This is a Level One Heading, highlighting
 it, and selecting Heading Level 1 would cause the <H1> and </H1> tags
 to be placed on either end of the highlighted text.

 Unless otherwise stated in the individual descriptions, each of these
 editors has the ability to insert into a text document the markup tags
 for all basic HTML functions as prescribed in the current HTML 2.0
 specifications. Such tags include those marking Head, Body, Title,
 Paragraph, Heading (size), Lists, Links, Anchors, etc. They do not
 necessarily support insertion of all styles, forms, special characters,
 or other less commonly used elements of the 2.0 specifications; those
 that support these elements will be specifically identified. Similarly,
 those that support the as yet incomplete HTML 3.0 specifications or the
 special Netscape extensions to the 2.0 specs will also be identified
 below.

 Sources of information about or copies of each of the editors described
 are included in URL (Uniform Resource Locator) format, in brackets, for
 use in checking out any programs that appeal to you.

 HTMLed 1.2e

 This comprehensive $39 shareware program by Peter B. Crawshaw is
 available from [ftp://pringle.mta.ca/pub/HTMLed/]. The author has provided
 several means of entering just about every HTML tag used under the 2.0
 specification with one notable exception - forms. Besides comprehensive
 menus, the program has buttons for the most common markup tags and has the
 ability to utilize multiple floating button bars that can overlay the
 document being edited. One of the unique features of this editor is its
 ability to load and save files in either DOS or UNIX format, the latter
 saving one very important step in creating a document that must reside on
 a UNIX-based system. Creation and use of a template for standardizing HTML
 documents is also supported. Other menu selections include Elements,
 Lists, Links, Styles, and Entities. This latter menu offers the unique
 capability of formatting entry of not just common characters, but allows
 the user to input any ASCII character by value, supports the extended c
 aracter set of foreign language characters, and even handles various
 accent markings such as Umlaut and cedilla. Other menu selections include
 the capability to define the displayed fonts (for editing purposes only),
 create a custom floating toolbar - on which one can include some tags not
 otherwise included in the program, and conversion of the MOSAIC.INI file
 into an HTML document.

 The program does no error checking of its own, but does allow linking to
 a user-selected Browser. This allows you to quickly see the effect of any
 markup and correct it if necessary.

 The unregistered shareware version is fully functional, but includes no
 HELP file. Its weaknesses are primarily in its lack of direct support of
 the form function of HTML 2.0 and both the proposed HTML 3.0 and Netscape
 extensions to HTML 2.0. While this limits the fancy stuff, a user with a
 basic knowledge of HTML would be hard pressed to find a more
 comprehensive stand-alone editor for basic HTML documents.

 HTML Assistant 1.4

 The freeware version of a commercial program, HTML Assistant is written
 by Howard Harawitz; information may be obtained from
 [http://fox.nsth.ns.ca/~harawitz/] and the program itself is available
 for download from [ftp://ftp.cs.dal.ca/htmlasst/]. The freeware version
 is limited to files no larger than 32k, a generous size. This program has
 a relatively limited menu, but a wide array of buttons, including all the
 basic functions. An optional second button bar contains quick picks for
 further functions. One special button is called "User Tools". It comes
 defaulted to a Form tool and has the capability of adding in other user
 designed tools as desired. This feature allows the program to adapt to
 newer HTML tags which are not directly supported in the basic program.

 Like most of the other programs reviewed, HTML Assistant can call up your
 favorite browser to check your markup. A nice feature of the editor is
 an option to Autosave before test; this ensures your current working
 text is saved in a temp file to be used whenever you call up your browser
 to view the effects you have created. The program also has the ability to
 Autoconvert both Mosaic.ini and Cello bookmark files to URL lists which
 may then be pasted into your HTML text. A detailed HELP file for the
 program eases the process of creating HTML text for new users although
 the program itself performs no error-checking.

 The $99.95 commercial version adds several features to the freeware
 version including automatic page generation - this version was not
 reviewed.

 A surprising weakness of the program is the lack of a pre-defined
 capability to insert special characters, foreign characters, and accents.
 Nor does the program support HTML 3.0 or Netscape enhanced functions in
 its basic form. The User Tools capability will make up for some of
 this, but presupposes that the user knows enough about HTML to properly
 build such tools. Despite several nice features, the program requires a
 fairly extensive knowledge of HTML to be used effectively to construct
 more than just basic Web pages. If you have that knowledge, however, its
 interface offers you a speedy and fairly powerful tool to put that
 knowledge to use.

 HTML Writer

 Version 0.9beta4a is the most recent version of this program which may be
 obtained from [http://lal.cs.byu.edu/people/nosack]. The author, Kris
 Nosack, labels the program donationware; there are no time restrictions
 or other limitations on its usage but you are encouraged to send a
 donation, in an amount of your choice, to the author. The version number
 gives a clue that it is still under construction, but what has been
 built so far is quite comprehensive.

 An extensive button bar contains all the common HTML markup functions -
 including a Test button to call your favorite browser to check your work
 and a Strip button which will remove all HTML tags from the page. The
 menu includes virtually every HTML 2.0 feature which is not directly
 supported by buttons, including forms. Many selections open dialog boxes
 that are used to construct the desired element. The program even has a
 unique URL Builder function that helps ensure the all-important syntax
 of this item is properly done. An extensive list of special and foreign
 characters complements the other features of the program.

 The program contains a template feature, allowing the user to create up
 to four different templates for boiler-plate items of text. It also
 offers the user the ability to save files in UNIX format, should that be
 needed, as well as the option of an auto-save on test. One of the
 nicest features for a beginning user is a brief HTML tutorial which is
 included in the programs HELP file!

 While the program appears virtually all-inclusive in its support of the
 HTML 2.0 standard, it does not support any of the proposed HTML 3.0 or
 Netscape features nor does it offer the user the capability of adding
 in such support - as several other programs do. But, with the
 comprehensive support of the 2.0 standard and the beta status of the
 program, it is likely that such features will be forthcoming in future
 versions. All in all, it is a well-done program particularly for
 beginning-to-intermediate HTML users.

 HoTMetaL 1.0+ (SoftQuad)

 Another freeware version of a commercial program, HoTMetal is available
 from [http://www.sq.com/]. Of the editors mentioned in this article, this
 one is unique in providing a quasi-Browser view of the HTML source
 document without the necessity of running an external browser. Although
 the view is not truly WYSIWYG, it is a pretty realistic depiction of what
 a true Web Browser will present. Unfortunately, it has another
 distinction: its size. Unlike most of the other editors discussed here,
 which typically ZIP to less than 200k and consume less than a meg of disk
 space in use, HoTMetaL's self-extracting ZIP is almost 2.2megs and,
 unzipped, its main executable alone is 1,870k! So any space saved by not
 requiring a Browser to preview/check your work is lost to this program
 itself. The program can also call an external browser to see exactly what
 your output will look like on the Web.

 HoTMetaL is best described as a rule-based HTML editor; its default is to
 accept only those tags that are fully compliant with its standards.
 Unfortunately, its standards do not seem to fully comply with HTML 2.0 -
 leaving the user in the unenviable position of not knowing whether a
 given error is caused by a bad HTML or just a rules interpretation by
 HoTMetaL.  Yet the user must either create the HTML file in this program
 or import a previously marked up file through the rules checker to see
 the quasi-WYSIWYG output while editing. If the document doesnt pass the
 rules checker, the user can either import it as a text document -losing
 the WYSIWYG view- or allow HoTMetaL to strip the document of any markup
 it doesnt understand, an action that can render the document unusable if
 the program and the documents author dont quite see eye-to-eye!

 Unlike most of the other editors discussed here, HoTMetaL has no button
 bar and its menus are relatively limited. The principal insertion means
 is the use of the Markup, Insert Element (Ctrl-I) menu selection. This
 brings up a window with a comprehensive scrolling list of HTML elements,
 including those for both forms and tables. Another menu selection,
 Markup, Insert Character Entity (Ctrl-E), opens a window listing
 virtually every symbol, foreign character, and accent possible. One click
 on the desired symbol causes the appropriate markup to be inserted.

 The program includes a basic tutorial on HTML - written as a series of
 HTML documents - and instructions on how to modify the rules used by the
 program to allow it to accept most of the extensions to HTML 2.0 used by
 Netscape. This process, unfortunately, requires editing the programs INI
 file.

 While this program has its strengths, its size, finicky rules
 interpretations, coupled with a fairly slow and cumbersome method of
 marking up text, make it one of the less desirable editors for general
 use.

 WebWeaver 4.0a

 This is a relative newcomer to this field and information on it may be
 obtained from its author Mark McConnell at
 [http://www.tufts.edu/~mmcconne/]. WebWeaver displays a fairly limited
 button bar across the top of the screen and a second series of buttons
 down the right side. Along the top you have buttons for Bold, Italic, and
 Underline, three types of lists (Bulleted, Numbered and Descriptive),
 Levels 1-6 of Headings, Paragraph and Horizontal Rule. The Right Buttons
 are for Link, Picture, Anchor, View, and Strip. What makes these few
 buttons different is that many of them open up large dialog boxes
 specific to the function selected. For example, clicking on the
 Descriptive List button opens a dialog box in which the entire list is
 constructed. Several buttons are used to mark appropriate elements and
 even a mini-help section is visible. When the selection is complete, the
 Done button inserts the entire selection into your document at the
 current cursor position. This allows the construction of these parts of
 your document in a clear and straightforward manner, as a separate
 element.

 While the buttons are limited, they do cover the more common elements of
 most HTML documents. The menu selections cover most of the remaining
 ones. A couple of points worth noting: This is one of the few editors
 that includes selections for such HTML elements as <ISINDEX>, <NEXTID>,
 <LINK>, and <BASE>. It also has a menu selection for a variety of
 Netscape-specific elements such as <CENTER> and <BLINK>. It is, however,
 severely lacking in its capabilities to insert special characters or
 foreign language letters and accents.

 Clearly this program is a "work-in-progress". Many of the menu selections
 bring up a dialog box stating "This is not available in this version".
 Its shareware registration price of $8 reflects this fact. While I cannot
 recommend the program in its current form, its innovative usage of dialog
 boxes marks it as one to watch in the future. The author is currently at
 work on a new version, which might be available when this is published.

 WebWizard 1.1 (ARTA Software)

 This fascinating program is included here by default. It is, after all, a
 stand-alone. But unlike the other software discussed above, WebWizard is
 not an editor. It is, rather, an automatic HomePage generator! Modeled on
 the "wizards" included in much new software, WebWizard takes you through
 a multi-step, menued process which actually creates a basic HomePage,
 properly formatted and tagged. The program allows you to enter your own
 personal text, a picture, and links to your favorite Web sites. While you
 have no choice on the layout of the resulting file, the end product is a
 highly usable - if somewhat plain - Web HomePage. Using the WebWizard
 creation as a starting point, the more advanced user can edit the HTML
 file further to modify or expand the basic page as desired. The program
 might best be described as optional shareware; while there is no
 requirement to register, a $10 contribution to David Geller, the author,
 brings the user the promise of information on updates and enhancements.
 The program itself is available from [http://www.halcyon.com/webwizard/].

 Recommendations...

 As I examined each of these programs, I could not help but think how very
 nice it would be to have this feature from Program A plus that feature
 from Program B plus... But that may be possible. Most of these programs
 are under on-going development and most are available for free or a very
 small cost. Thus a user can easily get and try several programs to get
 the comprehensive features he or she desires. Better yet, most of the
 authors are easily reachable via Email. A message to one requesting a
 missing feature or suggesting a better way to handle an existing one is
 far more likely to receive consider-ation than a similar message to
 Microsoft or IBM - particularly if it accompanies a registration <GG>!

 Do you really need one of these programs to write HTML? No, you dont
 need one; as both the text and the markup tags are ASCII, any editor
 -even Notepad- will do. One can markup a text file in Notepad, save it,
 and launch a Browser to view the result. Then why get one (or more)?
 Because each of them makes it easier to ensure that you have properly
 entered the tag that does what you want done. You dont need to remember
 long lists of markup codes; the editor does that for you.

 Clearly, for the total novice, David Geller's WebWizard is the place to
 start. It will construct a basic HTML HomePage for you  without requiring
 any special HTML knowledge on your part. At that point one of the nicest
 features of HTML becomes available: you can look at what it has
 constructed and learn from its example. Open the file WebWizard has
 created in any of the other editors -or even Notepad- and you will see
 the tags that have been inserted to markup your text. This same
 capability of learning from others can be a great tool to improving your
 abilities with HTML. Whenever you see a Web page that intrigues you -
 "How did they do that?" - just save it with your browser and examine it
 with one of the editors. You may even be able to cut-and-paste the
 desired feature right into your own document.

 The HTML editors I've reviewed are similar to limited, special-purpose
 versions of full-featured word processing programs such as Word Perfect
 and Word for Windows. Just as users develop fierce personal loyalties to
 one word processing program, you may find the features of one of these
 editors appeal to you more than any of the others. I've tried to point
 out the principal features and limitations of each, but the final
 judgement is yours. Fortunately, all are easily available on the Internet
 for your testing. Pick one -or more- and give it a try. I look forward to
 seeing some of your newly-constructed HomePages in my journeys through
 cyberspace.

 Paul Kinnaly is a government bureaucrat from nine-to-five. The rest of
 the time he enjoys exploring new ways to use his computer. HTML and the
 Web are his latest playthings. He also beta tests Windows95, makes
 occasional posts to the Ilink and RIME Windows conferences, and -when the
 editor can catch him- assists with writing and proofreading WindoWatch.
 He can be reached at paul.kinnaly@channel1.com or via his HomePage,
 http://www.channel1.com/users/paulk/.

 **The editor caught him this time! Paul sat in the editor's chair for our
   HTML feature. I shouldn't brag but I will! lbl


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                       TOOLS FOR THE INTERNET


                    CREATE  YOUR  OWN  WEB  HOMEPAGE
                   Copyright 1995  by Jerome Laulicht

 The surge of interest in having one's own Web page has spawned a rash of
 related software accompanied by a river of trade publication commentary .
 Creating a Web site has been seen as a daunting task requiring the use of
 arcane codes and commands which demand rigid conventions and reliance
 upon experts.  According to its developer, you can now you can satisfy
 this urge more easily, working alone with WebAuthor, the easy way to
 create HTML documents so claims its creators,  Streetwise Software and
 Quarterdeck.  As an aside, Microsoft has a competitive tool in beta
 version called Internet Assistant.  Both piggy-back upon the Windows
 standard --Microsoft's Word for Windows.  As of this writing WebAuthor
 can only be used with the 16 bit edition of V. 6.  Similar tools are, or
 are being made available for other mainline word processors like
 Wordperfect and AmiPro.

 Start With a Simpler Tool

 If you are new to creating homepages, I suggest starting with Web Wizard,
 a shareware tool for easy construction of a no frills home-page.  This
 software is a useful introductory tutorial on  the HTML language while
 getting your creative feet wet.  Do not start by reading anything else
 lest you seek confusion.  In my first reading I could have been scanning
 Latin.  To learn first by doing, use Web Wizard until you have mastered
 it well enough to produce several test pages. You do this by answering
 questions generated by the program to create from scratch a file
 containing the HTML commands.  Check out the results using the browser on
 your own computer and then correct, revise and test it again.

 One can also use Notepad to study the completed HTML files and learn by
 editing and inspecting the results.   This will give you a  notion of
 what is required to become adept at building Web pages, aside from
 considerations of design or layout. This experience also provides a
 sensible basis for deciding whether you want to purchase WebAuthor now
 because Web Wizard may meet  your current needs.

 There isn't much more to say about Web Wizard since its use is so self
 evident. You can include text and a graphic along with a limited number
 of  URL links. Visitors will not be able to use your homepage as a
 jump-off to many sites.  It is a bare bones approach which gets you
 started and teaches you quickly.  You might decide to settle for this but
 many people will want more. Some Internet access services are making
 similar easy homepage tools available  to their customers.  However, if
 you do want to become a full Internetnaut, you will make the choice
 between full control using most of the HTML authoring options or a happy
 compromise which acts as a buffer between you and the HTML standard.

 Evaluation Criteria for WebAuthor

 Quarterdeck's  claim of more ease with WebAuthor permits a simple
 evaluation framework.  Quarterdeck talks of  (1) point-and-click
 document construction; (2) absolutely no HTML experience necessary;
 and  (3) being able to use Word's features.  I'm a fair model for
 potential users  since I have long used Word and Windows, have never
 created a Web document and have been turned off by the idea.  The main
 lesson  I learned from several  HTML  programs was that they were
 difficult and boring to learn and use with almost use-less documentation.
 Nor am I a novice since I have enough under-standing of the Internet,
 hypertext, URL paths, browsers, etc. to  follow what's happening.
 Therefore, I should qualify as someone able to learn and use these tools.
 I planned this article with a positive but ambivalent bias because of the
 frequent failure of even excellent software houses to communicate well.
 I  sweated unsuccessfully to use the beta version and decided to await an
 upgrade.  It was onl y when it too did not work that I  finally guessed
 that it was incompatible with Word's 32 bit version. There were no
 evident hints in error messages or anywhere else.  Quarterdeck is
 promising a 32 bit version soon.

 The Hope for HTML Tools

 Quarterdeck is one of the outfits counting on the continued surge of
 homepage growth.  It, like other developers, are betting that Web Author
 and the integrated suite of Internet tools will be in demand by
 individuals as well as  organizations. One must conform to the HTML
 standards for presentation so the browser programs to decode your
 material and display it on anyones screen.   Most  people  probably want
 to focus on content and prefer a tool  to handle the tedious rote tasks
 involved in publishing their information.  The ideal is to make it  at
 least as easy to learn to publish on the Web as it is to learn a word
 processor.  When making the decision to finally purchase this kind of
 tool, demand only a minimum of incremental learning for the HTML program
 and rule out the need to learn a special language.  Emulate the strategy
 of  presenting choices in plain language in dialog and list boxes, with
 pop-up definitions.  For example, if you want to create a list,  you
 either highlight the ord list or click the list icon.  The program writes
 the commands  as is done in Web Wizard.

 Another hope is that many people who never heard of HTML would
 agree that if they can create documents with Word, they will easily learn
 how to create documents for the Internet.  Those  who wish to publish on
 the Internet, will ideally keep doing so and will look for better and
 fuller featured tools (upgrades). Perhaps this not very far-fetched when
 one realize that other developers are betting that a lot of people will
 want to create films with their computers.  This syllogism about
 WebAuthor is interesting although the odds are difficult to estimate.
 The fact is that both WebAuthor and Microsofts Internet Assistant are
 far easier to learn than any of the five or six HTML programs found on
 the Internet or BBS's in 1994. The speed of evolution of these tools is,
 indeed, remarkable.

 The final hope, of this is the sale-closing argument,  is that you will
 be hooked because you will be able to  ignore the syntax rules and other
 esoteria of  the HTML standard.  WebAuthor formats your creations into
 HTML documents semi-automatically.  Its rather like saying that more
 computer users would become at least amateur programmers if only they did
 not have to learn so much programming esoteria.

 Learning WebAuthor: The Tutorial

 To start learning how to use this program,  put off reading the manual
 and the on-line help. The tutorial is intended to give you the flavor of
 a hypertext document web by having you create links between files on your
 own computer or network.  Plan to go through the  tutorial two or three
 times. Since there are many ways to make errors, go through the entire
 sequence to get an overview  rather than struggling to get everything
 right immediately.  You can then learn the procedures by starting to
 catch and correct your errors.   Your first few efforts will very likely
 fail when you check them with the browser.  The process is not as easy as
 the hopes and the hype,  but this should be no surprise.  Marketing
 people, programmers and tutorial writers have quite different goals and
 problems.

 By the second or third try you should be editing to achieve perfection.
 Think of this process as writing several drafts of a paper.  It is
 difficult, in fact, to go very far after making an error without being
 made aware of it.   Technically the tutorial is well put together and
 fairly easy to follow and use.

 Although  the tutorial is good overall, its no surprise that it can get a
 bit goofy at times and it does have problems. The very first instruction
 is an attention-catching  example.  Open Word and select new in the file
 menu.   Of course it is difficult to imagine how anyone could do the
 WebAuthor tutorial without already having done these things.  Sometimes
 one gets the impression that no-one seriously critiques training
 materials before they are made part of a package. At other times the
 instructions are so cumbersome that they imply a procedure is more
 difficult than it actually is.   For example, six steps are listed to
 teach you how to have large icons in the  toolbar.  It's as if someone
 was providing a recipe for a person who has never cooked and its unclear
 why this even makes any difference. The instructions could easily be
 listed as two steps. The real joker is that you only learn to  determine
 whether the "HTML large" box is checked as it should be, and, if not, to
 make it so. One look in the right place and then a single click.  Really
 helpful and necessary!  There are some other less glaring examples of
 this clumsy approach but fortunately these two examples are not typical
 of many similar witticisms.

 Two hints which are not clearly stressed will make the tutorial an easier
 and more valuable experience ...simpler to use and more pleasant to
 learn!

 Open what is called the style window when you want to create an HTML
 document.  Else it is very easy to make silly errors which will further
 bedevil you by leading to more errors. This can be tedious to
 correct--take it from someone who did not follow this hint.  Failure to
 do this in a consistent way throws away some important practical
 advantages of the program. It is a way to avoid basic structural errors
 in working directly with HTML codes. Look up style in the on-line help
 before you start the tutorial.

 Use the "Help on top option" to avoid being driven slightly batty.   It
 is easy to miss this option  when you first bring up the tutorial window
 because it is not standard in Windows programs.   This choice is in the
 options menu.  The tutorial may be quite annoying to use without it
 invoked as you switch  focus back and forth between the instructions and
 the Edit window where you do the work.  Also make the  Edit window
 smaller than the entire screen or the help window will not reliably stay
 on top.

 This minor but near-essential feature of an on-line tutorial, does not
 work nearly as reliably as you would like to expect. The help window too
 often ends up disappearing to the taskbar when using Win 95, or when you
 click a menu or change focus between windows.  As you go through a string
 of directions showing buttons to choose in dialog boxes, and switching
 focus frequently, this defect is distracting and  makes problem solving
 harder.

 Wanted.   An inventive programmer who can make this technique work well
 and make it easy to incorporate in any program help file. In their spare
 time,  they could also try to devise methods other than large graphics
 files to improve on-line tutorials.

 Also Wanted.  Some discussion of whether there is some need for a
 consortium of developers to encourage and support efforts to standardize
 help tools, the results being made available to all comers.

 After completing the first five steps in the tutorial, you might begin to
 think that you have a program primarily intended for handling headings,
 to link graphics to your page and your page to other sites.  When you
 reach that point it all becomes very easy because you are typing words
 and making rather simple choices.  The only obvious difference from
 working with Winword is that you are using the WebAuthor  mode and the
 toolbar looks quite different.  When you finally see your copy converted
 to look like a Web page, the sun breaks through the clouds and all is
 fairly obvious.   Indeed, the HTML language is primarily about being able
 to publish on the Internet with a cross platform focus, that is, readable
 from a large variety of computers using different browsers and having
 different kinds of monitors.

 The tutorial does get  trickier but it does indeed make the task look
 easier. However, the tutorial omits many of the more  difficult points
 and makes little effort to help you understand. This is something you
 will have to get elsewhere than from the programs  manual and the
 on-line help.

 The software does include capabilities for advanced users  who wish to
 use and understand the more difficult and esoteric elements and to add
 important features to their HTML documents.  It helps create the links
 easily and correctly to all the components of your site as well as to
 other sites by checking your accuracy and providing feedback. You can add
 new jumps and links readily, edit the text files and get quick feedback
 while trying out different modes  of presentation.

 A new user does have to be careful when learning how to take advantage of
 the feature to switch a document back and forth between HTML and Word.
 This provides the ability to carry out different functions in each while
 exploiting the strengths of the combined tools simultaneously. However,
 the penalty is greater complexity!   Again we see that this tool is not
 for the faint-hearted but this is still true for many tools of the
 Internet.

 No sensible argument can be made that WebAuthor is real easy to use; only
 that it is easier to use than many other programs. It should  not
 surprise  anyone who has looked with care at many Web sites to hear that
 WebAuthor demands meticulous care and precision to achieve accuracy and
 some measure of elegance and quality.  There is very little or no
 tolerance for error and the program does not hesitate to confront you
 with messages stating your errors. A simple  example: what is called the
 style must be correctly labeled for each line or paragraph or you have
 only a mess, and this is just the start.  Even hitting the enter key at
 the wrong time can put the wrong tag or code on a line or a paragraph.
 This is not meant to discourage you but only to caution you to see beyond
 the marketing noise.  WebAuthor falls within the tradition of complex
 word processors and sophist-icated spreadsheet programs, to take but two
 examples.  Were they ever easy to learn unless of course, you restricted
 your usa e to letters and analyses of your weekly allowance when you were
 a teenager.

 Web Wizard, V1.1  Shareware.  Registration=$10
 Arta Software, David Geller
 davidg@halycon.com  or Compuserve  72667.1312
 http//www.halycon.com/webwizard

 Web Author for Word for Windows, V1.0    $100
 Quarterdeck and Streetwise Software

 Jerry Laulicht is early retired from the University of Pittsburgh. He
 keeps his teaching skills tuned by training  local people to use
 computers.



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                              More HTML tools:



                        HoTMetaL Pro 2.0 - Etc: An Update
                          Copyright 1995 Phil Leonard


 A few comments on the brand new release of SoftQuad's HoTMetaL Pro 2.0
 (http://www.sq.com) for publishing HTML documents on the Web.  My
 original copy of HoTMetal Pro 1.0 with its companion CD,  was bundled in
 a book called HTML Publishing on the Internet by Brent Heslop and Larry
 Budnick  for $49.  HoTMetaL Pro 1.0 was priced at $199 and 2.0 is the
 same price, however, quite reduced in price as an upgrade for $59.

 My original impression was that 1.0 was hard to use.  It is a rules based
 Word Processor.  You make a mistake and HoTMetaL barfs.  It is
 intimidating.  The authors of this book loved it, so I persisted. In
 truth, I came to love the program as well even though it was not quite
 polished.

 With HotMetaL Pro 2.0, not only is the program quicker and more user
 friendly, it now automatically chooses what it thinks would be acceptable
 when you make an error.  So instead of being confronted with "YOU CAN'T
 DO THAT STUPID!!!", it now elegantly inserts tags where you probably
 meant to put them and then asks you if this is what you meant.

 I've only used Pro 2.0 briefly, but as one quite familiar with HTML
 Writer and I have to wonder aloud at the blatant similarity between them.
 There are now three break-away button bars.  Almost every feature is now
 supported with hot-keys AND buttons.  It will open up unlimited browsers
 for previews.  It will open and convert almost any word processor format.
 And it will PUBLISH, that is, find and replace all of your
 file:///c:/gifs with http:///yourname/gifs, instantly opening and
 previewing your document in Netscape.  I am quite impressed.  It supports
 HTML 2.0, HTML 3.0, and Netscape.  It does an SGML document check and
 tells you each instance where you break the HTML 2.0 rules,and with what
 rule, whether it is with Netscape or HTML 3.0.

 Hot Dog!

 In the midst of looking at HoTMetaL Pro 2.0 another contender grabbed my
 attention. Hot Dog touted by many, looks as good as everyone says. It
 actually resembles HoTMetaL Pro 2.0 in many ways. Even so, I didnt spend
 much time with Hot Dog because it became immediately apparent, at least
 from my point of view, that three important elements are missing.

 First and most important, Hot Dog does not appear to show in-line images.
 Anyone who has coded HTML knows that long and complicated forms can get
 very confusing. I find it helps immensely when I can see all of the
 images and what HREFs are attached. Next, the HREFS in HoTMetaL Pro are
 colored and labeled with hot keys. They really stand out and separate
 themselves from the normal text. Just much easier to sort out. And
 finally, HoTMetaL pro converts all tags into small graphical images, like
 pentagons. The tags are much easier to see, and hide all of the tag code
 unless you press a hot key or icon.

 Hot Dog seems to have tons of options. I did not go through them all. I
 think it is much more user configurable than HoTMetaL. Whether it is
 familiarity with the product or just a good fit I find HoTMetaLs
 selection of options is exactly how I want it to work. When comparing the
 two programs I have to lean towards HoTMetal  probably because I just
 prefer it.


 Phil Leonard is a veteran Internet surfer who has developed a keen
 interest in HTML authoring tools for the Internet. This is his first
 contribution to WindoWatch...we hope not his last!  He can be reached at
 pleonard@cybercom.net

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                            Microsoft Does HTML


                    Creating HTML with Internet Assistant
                          Copyright 1995 by Jim Plumb

 If you use MS Word 6 and you want to create HTML documents you might be
 interested in picking up a copy of Internet Assistant, a free add-on
 template for Word 6.0a available from Microsofts Web server at
 http://www.microsoft.com/msword/ia.

 I've used this product from time to time since it was in beta test and
 Ive found it a handy tool for creating HTML docs from scratch and also
 for converting other Word documents to the HTML format. And of course you
 cant beat the price. However, you do need some power to run Internet
 Assistant. Microsoft  recommends a 386 with 8 mgs of ram.  I soon
 discovered, you will need those 8 mgs.

 Internet Assistant (IA) comes as a self-extracting archive, which
 should be extracted into a temporary directory. Use the File/Run menu to
 run setup which puts IA in a sub-directory of Winword. It also asks if
 you want to install the internet browser capability. You need to have an
 internet connection to run the IA browser.  IA is a Winword template,
 which in this case means a set of styles, macros, dialogs, buttons, and
 must be run under Winword.

 There are two modes of running IA, Edit and Browse Mode, which can be
 reached from the File menu or by a button with a pair of eye-glasses for
 Browse and a pencil for Edit. Browse mode lets you cruise the net or
 cruise your interoffice network, whichever way you hyper-links direct
 you. IA comes with an very adequate help file which will be all youll
 need to get up and running. I did find that one of the URLs listed in
 one of Help FAQs was out of date and directed me to another one.

 Browse is where your 8 mgs of ram come in handy. My home computer has 4
 mgs and it took a long time for the browser to down-load HTML files and
 display them to the screen. Ill stick with Netscape thanks. Edit mode is
 where you create HTML documents. You can create the doc as you would in
 Word. HTML attributes can be applied to your document as you would apply
 styles. This version of IA only supports HTML 2 and didnt see any
 mention of support for HTML 3 on the Internet Assistant Web page.

 When you finish your document save it as HTML and voila you are a Web
 publisher. What I like about this is that while you are editing the HTML
 file you can switch to browse mode and check the links to see if they
 actually go anywhere. If you are browsing you can push a button to copy
 the present URL to the clipboard, switch back to edit mode and paste it
 in to your document.

 One thing you need to watch out for when browsing, especially if you are
 low on ram, is that IA opens each hyperlinked document in its own window
 and keeps them on the desktop They can build up fast and use up your free
 resources in quite a hurry.

 IA can convert many kinds of documents to HTML, basically anything that
 can be opened by or pasted into Winword can be saved as an HTML document.
 It's my opinion that this one of its strong points. However you are
 creating your HTML document, you now have a good head start on your work.
 If you want to try this out, make sure your MS Word is 6.0a or greater.
 If it is 6.0, you can download the upgrade from the IA Web page.

 Jim Plumb is the WindoWatch homepage editor and our resident Acrobat
 expert. He can be reached at jplumb.user1.channel1.com



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                Bellying up to the Web for Fun and Profit
                  Copyright 1995  by Lois B. Laulicht



 Anyone who frequents the business pages of the New York Times or reads
 the Wall Street Journal is acutely aware of the high level of business
 interest generated by the Electronic Super Highway.  News stories of
 exploratory agreements, emerging partnerships, recent Congressional
 telephone legislation, and Administration involvement have focused full
 media attention upon  the spectacular growth of the Internet. The locus
 of  this activity is the World Wide Web....the graphical point of
 engagement.

 For whatever it's worth, both new and experienced Internet users, are
 scurrying about trying to figure a way to make a buck out of the Web.
 The promise of large numbers of ordinary people owning computers is
 becoming a fact of life. Most of these boxes are now sold with internal
 modems already setup. The most inexperienced computer users now have a
 leg up to bop around the World Wide Web first time out. Should they have
 the good fortune of finding a hardware vendor working with an Internet
 provider who packages pre-configured browser software, it is a win-win
 for everyone and an old business gets a new twist.

 Once a user accesses the Web, they become a potential customer for
 anything sold in the real world of credit cards, automobile show-rooms,
 fine art, and mail order catalogues. It is the increasing volume of this
 activity which becomes the  fodder to create and do business.  In spite
 of the public promise of riches and glory there continues to remain a
 huge leap from enthusiastic expectation to that of  real world bank
 deposits.

 The Reality of the World Wide Web

 It has been said by some that " the Web is a cornucopia of information
 and an encyclopedia of places to go". The fact of the matter is that this
 very interesting place called the World Wide Web with its scads of
 information on a wide range of topics is almost more than what most
 people can absorb and/or utilize. As a result, the search for and
 compilation of data spread around so many different sites has created a
 rash of new browsers, search tools, and data base software, to name just
 a few categories. The plethora of homepages represent an expanding center
 of speculation of what and how  one can  market goods and services. We
 can read these in English or French, etc.,  but the Internet language of
 choice is originally written with HTML, the Hypertext Markup Language.

 After one gets into the thick of Web activity its almost impossible to
 avoid the queries for information, yells for help, and words of advice on
 how to create your very own homepage. The best advice I ever got on the
 subject was from my Sysop, Brian Miller of Channel One, about a year ago.
 He told me to learn to use HTML...yesterday!

 I frankly stalled as would any sensible person with too much to do, until
 I no longer had a choice.  If I wanted to be a part of the new wave of
 on-line publishing,  learning this language is a necessity. Not that HTML
 is hard. It isnt.  Not that we publish an entire issue of WindoWatch
 using HTML...we dont. However, if you want to have a presence on the Web
 and want to diddle and experiment with your own homepage,  nothing beats
 a hands-on approach.  For the moment at least, HTML is the language of
 the homepage and is the very guts of the Web. All of which could change
 tomorrow when a better mousetrap is written and released.

 A Minimalist Approach to HTML

 Given that I have no need or desire to become an HTML expert, were I to
 start all over, I would  tackle the vagaries of HTML quite differently. I
 do have to edit copy and recommend changes and additions to those who
 have primary HTML responsibility.  I care very much, not only about the
 voice we present but also about the public clothes we wear.  Mine is
 not the role of a technician but rather one of a nit picker.

 My revised game plan would focus upon careful perusal of many samples of
 working HTML documents that I liked. I would examine them using a
 familiar tool,  my trusty DOS ASCII editor, to get a feel for the
 language.   Using Netscape or Mosaic one can view  the original document
 and then experiment with the HTML tags in ASCII. Changing the copy and
 then looking at those changes using a browser gives one immediate
 feedback along with the freedom to experiment.  By  keeping the edited
 and revised copy  within the confines of a single working subdirectory,
 one can create the feel of really being on-line.  With practice and
 experimentation, one develops sufficient skill to do the rudimentary
 tasks  as well as greater proficiency with the tools.

 Some tips. . .

 Graphics are gorgeous and allow one to do very creative things on a
 homepage. Nonetheless, GIFs take time to bring up and view in a browser.
 On-line time costs your potential audience money. A 14400 modem is quite
 slow. Once surfers learn to keep track of costly on-line time it becomes
 a short step to upgrade to the faster 28800. The modem upgrade combined
 with a 32 bit operating system like Windows NT or Windows95  along with
 the  appropriate amount of on board cache is the difference between
 snowplowing down a hill and good, tight parallel skiing.

 Keep the material on your page fresh. Create a schedule to replace
 material that has been on your homepage too long. I dont spend much time
 on sites with teeny notices saying Last Reconstruction -May 10, 104 BC
 (before computers). We try to change content at least every two weeks.
 The operative word here is try. . Would you bother to return to a page
 with an old update sign and too often read  information?

 Try to find out who your visitors are. If you can, convince them to fill
 out a brief form to help you understand the constraints of their
 hardware/software, their level of interest and knowledge of your homepage
 offerings, and where they heard about you. What was it that brought them
 to your homepage? Would they visit your home-page again? Do you offer
 free software or special prices on goods and service?  While freebies and
 gimmicks are pretty transparent to savvy users,  good fun can be a
 service to be enjoyed by all.  My favorite gimmicky fantasy is a WEB
 tutorial, in the form of a WindoWatch scavenger hunt.  One way to find
 out if your readers would participate is to ask them and then use the
 forms feature for feedback and actual signup for the online event.

 Organize your page for ready access to information using links to other
 pages or other places and be prepared to check out those links often for
 continued quality.  Use  variations of font size, texture and color to
 help keep the page visually interesting . Background textures, while
 interesting, also slow down the time to read files.

 While visual appeal is important , we try to  emphasize content, not
 fluff.

 Hits and Misses

 There's a lot of chatter about the numbers of visitors who stop by a
 given site.  One of the functions where computers excel is in the area of
 counting. When a computer on a BBS counts the number of times a
 particular file is downloaded it is recorded within a piece of software
 charged to count each of the downloads. There can also be automatic
 counters installed on a Web site to count the number of visitors.
 Unfortunately the numbers are not always accurate and can be deceptive in
 terms of what they represent.

 Here is an example of why most people should be very wary of raw homepage
 statistics.  There are three individuals working the WindoWatch homepage.
 I log on at least once a day and sometimes more often than that.  I
 assume the others are counted as often.  Our counter was tied to users
 with graphical browsers so it didnt register people coming on in text
 mode.  Therefore, to be honest, I must reduce the final monthly count by
 3 X 30 or 100 visits per month and increase it by an unknown number of
 people using text browsers. Windo-Watch,  like other fledgling
 organizations, would get more juice if we inflated that number.
 Obviously, many of the ozone layer numbers touted about are highly
 suspect. Notwithstanding the pros and cons, a count is a useful estimate,
 if  reasonably interpreted and used primarily to track increases and
 decreases of visitors over a given period of time.

 Security

 The second biggest issue on the Internet is that of assuring secure
 business transactions.  Given the horror stories of hacker intrusion into
 allegedly secure systems, it is not surprising that no one is willing to
 get too heavily involved in untested credit card transactions.  I
 certainly wouldn't want to take the responsibility for abuse of a customers
 credit card account and can understand the worries and constraints of
 international commerce where patents and inventions are at stake.

 One of the obvious drawbacks of HTML is its ease of replication.  One of
 the limitations of existing browsers is the simplicity of grabbing
 anyone's work and calling it your own. And finally, the notion of giving
 away ones creativity to the very open forum of the Internet is not
 exactly conducive to business to do much more than use the Web as an
 extension to their marketing department.

 It will be interesting to reassess my own conclusions in this area six
 months from now. I am also quite sure that the industry is creative
 enough to turn up a surprise or two. But it is business who has charged
 ahead in some of the most important areas we've discussed.  The recently
 released Server version of Netscape will go a long way in providing  a
 secure environment for clients.  Mastercard and Visa are preparing to
 make available secure credit card options as early as September of 1995.
 Agreements have been made between Adobe and Netscape relating to
 compatibility issues of the Portable Document Format of Adobe's Acrobat
 (their established authoring tool) and the Netscape browser. Costs for an
 Internet connection continue to drop and become more competitive daily.

 Whatever else happens in this area, more and more folks will be sharing
 the rapidly narrowing bandwidth of the Internet. Many will also come to
 share my conclusions and will learn HTML because they must.  Hopefully,
 they will be very aware that the WEB is rapidly changing place. The
 challenge to users is to keep up with emerging trends which quite often
 lead to the development of new tools.

 Although HTML is now it is not necessarily tomorrow. We must all remain
 flexible and ready to give up that old model T?  Do you know anyone still
 using Edlin?


 Lois Laulicht is the Editor and Publisher of WindoWatch.  She lives with
 her husband and their German Shepherds in the West Virginia hills.


                                    ww












        *               *               *               *               *







                       Looking for Information....


                   Search and Ye Shall Find.....Maybe!

                  Copyright 1995 by  Peter Neuendorffer


 What it means to search for information on computers and the Internet can
 be illustrated by using real-life comparisons. Much of this search
 article is about common sense that is rooted in experience and  has been
 incorporated into computer programming theory and practice.

 A central problem of the information explosion, new or old, is how to
 find specific information. I have a consultant friend who had to
 uninstall a program that he couldn't find because the user had put every
 single file into a single large directory on the hard disk.  Liken this
 to having a big warehouse with no shelves. As files proliferate on
 computers, file names and extensions don't give a clue as to whats
 inside an individual file.  So what that Windows95 has come up with the
 long file name?  Just another elusive title and not much else!

 There are a number of important reference points for a search and for
 search tools which include knowing what you are looking for, which
 ballpark it probably is in,  and how much time and work space you have.
 How much stuff you will have to search  - the size of the search space -,
 and what you know  about how it is organized are all relevant. That's a
 lot to keep track of and to understand  for most people. The noted
 information scientist Norbert Wiener is quoted as asking "Am I walking to
 lunch or coming from lunch? I don't know!"  Not only did he not know what
 he was looking for, he probably didnt even know where he was!

 Finding one's sense of direction when undertaking a search can be
 crucial. The other day I mislaid my house keys. I knew what I was looking
 for. Surely they were in one of the correct obvious places. I ransacked
 the apartment, to no avail. This called for logic.  Could I reconstruct
 exactly what I did when I last came in?  It came to me that as I  was
 unloading my bundle of bathroom sundries the telephone rang.  Sure
 enough, my keys were behind the toilet paper in the broom closet.  A
 likely place. I had the What, and the time and space, but not the Where,
 nor had I accounted for human error.

 Indexing of information is common from your local phone tickler to the
 largest mainframes. One technique, hashing, involves storing information
 not randomly one item after another, but in mathema-tical order that
 makes retrieval faster.

 Searching keywords on the Internet can be a pain, because you don't
 have the What.  If you do, you don't have both the time and space, as a
 field of 200000 entries pops up for the word computer. How do you find
 what youre looking for if the search system doesn't understand what you
 want? Even in these crude searches, Internet searches are indexed.  The
 search engine knows something about the data it is searching and how it
 is organized - in addition to just how to search it. A simple tool in
 computer science for searching lists is taken from how we search for a
 name in a paper phone book, the Binary Search.

 The Binary Search must  have an  alphabetized list to succeed so it knows
 that the list is in alphabetical order.   It uses this logic: When we
 look for Jones in the  phone book, we unconsciously turn to the middle
 -actually to the left of middle- of the book. If we come up with
 Friendly, we unconsciously turn halfway further in the book. And back and
 forth by large chunks till we get the Jones page. This search is a lot
 faster than starting at the first name on page one and then proceeding.
 We are cutting the book in powers of 2.

 This algorithm has an O of less than one. Many problems in computer
 science are non-complete since it would take longer to solve them  than
 there is time in the universe.  For example, because it is so hard to
 find very large prime numbers, one company was able to patent two of
 them. Having devised a search method, they own the rights to the numbers.
 Finding out the exact location of Earth relative to Mars in 1000 years is
 the three body problem that is deemed not solubable unless we wait 1000
 years.

 Fortunately, we are not usually looking for such weighty information, but
 rather, something more like our Aunt Martha's phone number in our
 personal information manager. With such a small field to search on our
 computer,  it is fast. We know the where, the what, have the time and
 work space, and the software knows a lot about  how the PIM  warehouse is
 organized.

 However, when we get out into the bigger world, it is not simply who owns
 the information but who is able to find it that is  the important key.
 Just talking to the IRS or Social Security can be a trial as you wait
 endlessly through a hold pattern with recorded messages like Please do
 not hang up, or your call will be further delayed. or  Don't give up,
 we'll be with you momentarily. Maybe!


 If we attempt to index large amounts of information, that's OK, but we
 will have to be prepared to update the index constantly.  When I worked
 for a department store, we were constantly counting inventory as
 shipments came and went and merchandise was sold. The stock numbers were
 set up differently for every type of item and vendor. Certainly the POS
 system is a vast improvement, indexing the lists. If only discount
 coupons didn't bog down the supermarket checkout line, violating all of
 my time, space, and know what you are looking for rules.

 People question the computer's accuracy , discounting the answer, and
 this is another story. That can't be right, check again. or I hate
 computers, they're always wrong. If people get their information and then
 misread it or don't use it or reject it, what is the use of it all? The
 famous case in point in science is the cold fusion Stanford experiment,
 which astounded scientists because it would mean the ancient Alchemists
 were right about turning lead to gold. Unfortunately,  the certainty of
 their results were deemed to be  in the noise zone, or not much better
 than fiction.

 I have a friend who works as an order picker in a warehouse. He
 punches  stock changes into a computer  when he physically moves items
 around.  But what if the stores information gets out of kilter with
 reality?  Sales go up, inventory goes down some on paper, but actually
 there is much less in the warehouse than anyone realizes.  Although  the
 information was wrong, it was assumed to be right. The cozy computer
 system then was consistent but only with itself,  not with the real
 stockroom! it was supposed to reflect That essential match was going to
 pot. Somewhat like President Hoover's famous remark shortly before the
 Depression "Prosperity is just around the corner."

 According to Newsweek magazine, a state-of-the-art automated ware-house
 for running shoes ground to a halt. The workers found that they could not
 move anything into or out of the facility, even though conveyer belts
 kept spewing out merchandise for non-existent orders.  We live in the
 real world, not inside a computer. Information not matching reality is
 garbage, at best a theory or modelling.

 That method of organization was described in Lewis Carroll's
 Alice in Wonderland. At the tea party, the Mad Hatter ordered every-one
 to move down the table when the dishes were dirty. Garbage in, garbage
 out. But still, if you are not playing with a full deck, you can  pose a
 search question  which is  perfectly reasonable and  still get garbage
 for an answer.  Its like dealing with one of those Bostonians who are
 noted for firmly giving patently wrong street directions to passers-by
 who  have lost their  way.

 What if the search system doesn't have the foggiest idea of where   the
 item that youre looking for is located in your search space ?  It knows
 nothing about it's warehouse except that it  contains files which are in
 text format.  You are looking for the word computer on your hard drive.
 It has an equal probability of being in the first line of the first file,
 or the last line of the last file. You could index the drive, but that
 takes a lot of time, and  some space.

 Without an index to use, you start out with a zero probability of
 finding a match,  but, as you move ahead,  you are  more sure of finding
 your answer. By the end, you have a 100% probability if its there at
 all. If you skip to the middle to start, this is just like rearranging
 your warehouse and will still take the same time-- actually longer-since
 you have to rearrange the warehouse.

 The fruitless search takes the longest.  If you asked a sales person to
 look for an item in the color and size you want, he may come back 15
 minutes later  to report that  "We don't have it."   It  takes so long
 precisely because they do not have it. It's either there or it isn't but
 he had to search the entire stockroom to find the answer.  One assumes
 that most stockrooms are  well-organized and is surprised when this is
 not the case.

 Let's get back to searching your PC for text and presume you do not have
 an index. You are starting from scratch. Your work space and time are
 constant. You only have till three o'clock, and the hard drive only has
 so much free disk and memory space to work with. You can narrow down the
 size of the search space by looking only for DOC files and ignoring
 categories of files like programs. Or perhaps start the search in a
 subdirectory that is likely to have your information, like \DOC. The file
 names do tell you something about how the data is organized, but they are
 like labels on packages with the contents imprecise. Somewhat
 informative, but not detailed as that would take up much more space.
 Unfortunately, searching for a lower case a is different than searching
 for a upper case A because words like alice and ALICE are stored
 differently on the computer.

 Another way you can narrow down the search is picking what you are
 looking for carefully.  Computer is not going to be very descriptive on a computer. In the middle of a lake, looking for a computer would be very helpful because it is a rarer item then on land. A rarer item on the computer might be EISA motherboard. We can also search for more than one thing or field at once, using Boolean Logic.

 Boolean logic involves using AND OR NOT  like arithmetic.  A Boolean
 expression is either true or false.  In other words, we search for ALICE
 AND COMPUTER. Both words must be found near each other in our files to
 evaluate as true. If Search_it (ALICE and COMPUTER) then "we have a
 match". It turns out that you can string together combinations of the
 operators AND OR NOT. Of course on the computer, you have to have
 software that does this. In real life you use these conditions all the
 time without realizing it. "If it's lunch time and I'm hungry then I
 think I'll eat."

 One of the fundamental aspects of computers is being able to perform
 different actions based on the result of a condition.

             IF BEFORE LUNCH THAN EAT BREAKFAST ELSE EAT LUNCH.
         Or, IF THE_COMPANY_SHOWED_A_PROFIT than PAY_STOCKHOLDERS
                Else FILE_BANKRUPTCY.

 Each of the actions above could be the name for a procedure, module, or
 program that does all the necessary processing.

 A Boolean condition could be ALICE and (COMPUTER or GROCERY). This match
 would be a mention of the word ALICE and also one of the others, either
 COMPUTER or GROCERY. Structured Query Language searches utilize this type
 of searching; they also extract records that have common fields. But
 remember in our search, we know very little about how our information
 warehouse is organized.

 It turns out, luckily, that Boolean conditions can be chopped in two, and
 each half treated separately. This is like cutting the cards, and then
 cutting them again, and can produce the same kind of speed increase as
 the phone book example above. If we are searching for two things at once,
 say ALICE and COMPUTER, as soon as we know that Alice isn't there, we
 don't have to check for Computer.

 In searching, time and space are at a premium. You give up one for the
 other and must compromise. The ready availability to a great variety of
 knowledge bases opens up information if one has the ability to use search
 tools and learn to use those tools efficiently and with minimum cost.
 Although it is currently gauche to say, not all of us will live forever.
 It would be nice to know that we will  find what were looking for before
 the end!

 Peter Neundorffer is a regular WindoWatch contributor.  He is the creator
 of Alice and a DOS and Windows programmer. Peter  has very recently
 released a text search program for Windows he calls  Bool Text Searcher
 which can be retrieved as ABOOL11.ZIP"




                                      ww













        *               *               *               *               *


















                         The Cat's Out of The Bag!



                        copyright 1995  by *Stanley

           The twenty pound black and white furry Windows expert!
                    Bob Miller's Stanley Does Windows

 Dear Stanley,

 I'm confused.  How much memory do I really need for Windows 95?


 Dear Confused,

 Microsoft says that you need a 386 DX machine with 4 megs of ram (and
 some people have been known to use an SX).  In reality, such a machine is
 so slow as to be unbearable.  The minimum real system is a 486DX2-66 with
 8 megs of ram but 16 megs is better.


 Dear Stanley,

 I'm going to be upgrading to Windows 95.  Will my copy of WinWord 6.0
 still work?

 Puzzled


 Dear Puzzled,

 Yes but WinWord 7.0 either as a stand alone or as part of Office 95,  is
 far better.  Im using it and I love it almost as much as tuna fish.


 Dear Stanley,

 I am still using a CP/M machine with 64 KB of ram and I am having
 difficulty getting programs for it.  I see all these new programs for
 something called Windows 96 or some such.  Can I run that on my machine?

 Old Timer


 Dear Old (and you are),

 Not unless you get the add on for CP/M users.  This file is available
 from the international CP/M support board  in Ulan Batur, Mongolia.   The
 file is 123,421 MB in size  but unlimited downloads are available to
 first time callers after just filling out the twelve page questionnaire
 -- in Mongolian, of course.  The Board has two of the newest, state of
 the art modems.  One is a 110 baud and the other a blazing 300 baud. The
 first 200 downloaders will receive a chance to win a fur lined bathtub
 trimmed with barbed wire and filled with 200 pounds of rancid yak butter.

 This is also the support board for Turbo Edlin for Windows 95 and all 173
 patch files can be obtained here.  Good hunting!

 Purrfectly yours,
 Stanley

 Bob Miller really does have a Stanley!  Stanley is a very computer
 literate cat who has been generously providing advice to his large world
 of computer users. He has been recently nominated to that most sought
 after award The Microsoft Magnificent Mousekiller Mission. The prize is a
 litter box filled with the most recent IBM offering- Warp bundled and
 shredded with Lotus Notes!


                                     ww








        *               *               *               *               *







    A Product Review...                         System Commander


                The Operating System Manager: A Challenge
                  Copyright 1995 by John M. Campbell

 The current crop of new operating systems has tempted the more
 adventurous among us to give the various offerings a spin.  Now, it isn't
 too difficult to try different OSes, one or two at a time. For instance,
 running, DOS, Windows 3.x, Windows 95, OS/2 Warp and      Linux at the
 same time represents a challenge over and above the obvious need for a
 humongous amount of hard drive space.  Yet, it is difficult to evaluate
 several new systems unless they can be  used alongside a standard
 reference system.  Three or more OSes can co-exist on one machine, but a
 successful installation  requires consider-able planning, keeping in mind
 the need to easily switch back and forth among them.

 All OSes depend on a small area at the beginning of the hard drive
 reserved for the "Master Boot Record."  Among other things, this critical
 area holds the code needed to start the OS.  Some systems, such as OS/2
 Warp, Windows NT and Windows 95, have built-in features that make it
 possible to move back and forth between that system and DOS.  But no OS
 that I am aware of carries the built-in capability to switch back and
 forth among multiple systems.  Enter System Commander, from V
 Communications.

 System Commander can manage over 100 different operating systems
 in primary and logical partitions, or as many as 32 different FAT
 compatible OSes in a single primary DOS partition!  I can't imagine
 anyone in their right mind attempting to run 100 OSes, but it's nice to
 know the capability is there!

 The program offers a lot of useful features that will be summarized at
 the end of this article.  For now, let's see how it  works and go through
 an actual installation.

 C:(Root)
            |
  |----MSDOS622
  |----COMMAND.COM
  |----CONFIG.SYS
  |----AUTOEXEC.BAT
                  |
 WIN95
 |----COMMAND.COM
 |----CONFIG.SYS
 |----AUTOEXEC.BAT
 |----MSDOS.SYS (Win95
      configuration file)
                  |
 WINNT
 |----BOOT.INI

 System Commander works its magic by writing its own unique boot record
 to initiate the boot process, then replacing it with the code for the
 desired OS, which is selected from the System Commander menu.  The boot
 process then continues under the control of the selected system.  If the
 chosen OS uses its own AUTOEXEC.BAT, CONFIG.SYS, COMMAND.COM and/or other
 unique files, images of these files are stored in a special directory,
 then swapped to the root directory of Drive C when that OS is selected.
 The inset is a typical SC image file directory structure that might exist
 after loading three OSes:

 The installation itself is straightforward.  The program comes on a
 single diskette.  Typing INSTALL, then following a few on screen
 instructions, sets up System Commander.  When the computer is rebooted,
 the program saves system information for whatever OSes it finds, then it
 presents the SC menu.  Every installed OS should be listed.  The order,
 description, and other functions can be changed at this point by pressing
 ALT-S for a Setup menu.

 If new OSes are installed after System Commander, they may not appear on
 the SC menu when the machine is rebooted.  Or, SC itself may not appear.
 Windows 95, for example, overwrites the  boot sector code, in this case,
 SC's, with its own during the install process.  The developers have taken
 these possibilities  into account.  The Setup menu permits adding the new
 OS to SC's menu, and a separate utility, SCIN, is provided to deal with
 Windows 95 and the Japanese DOS/V, which also destroys SC's code in the
 boot sector.  Running SCIN from DOS reinstalls SC's master  boot record.
 Now for the additional features.  There are quite a few.  First, there is
 optional boot security protection.  A password can be chosen to pre-vent
 access to the hard drive(s), and make it impossible to boot from a
 floppy.  Passwords are internally encrypted for additional security.  A
 second password can be used to prevent unauthorized persons from
 accessing SC's own setup menu, or from using certain HD partitions.

 It is possible to run multiple versions of DOS, or to run DOS with
 various AUTOEXEC.BAT and/or CONFIG.SYS configurations. Each configuration
 can be a separate menu choice.

 If you are so unfortunate as to be stricken with a boot sector virus, it
 can be easily removed by rebooting.  SC will detect the changed code and
 ask if a new OS has been installed.  Selecting bypass on the SC menu will
 cause the boot sector and the hidden system files to be over-written with
 the fresh, hopefully uninfected, copies that SC keeps in the image
 directories.  Of course, all this is dependent upon using anti-virus
 software to detect the problem in the first place! Another neat trick SC
 offers is the ability to create multiple primary partitions and make any
 of them bootable, something FDISK can't do.  Consider Windows 95.
 Normally, you have the choice of install- ing it over version 3.x, so
 that Windows applications will migrate, or you can install 95 into a
 fresh directory, in which case apps will have to be reinstalled.  One
 choice mangles DOS making it impossible to return to the earlier Windows
 version; the other involves a lot of application reinstallation.

 What if you had two computers?  You could install Windows 3.x and your
 DOS and Win apps on both machines, then install Win 95 on the second
 machine only. With System Commander, you can, in effect, do something
 similar on a single computer, if you have unused disk space.  First,
 using FDISK and SCIN, create a second bootable partition from the unused
 space.  This becomes Partition 1.  The original bootable partition is
 Partition 0.

 Here is one example.  Remember that DOS assigns Drive C to which-ever
 partition is bootable:

             partition 0  | DOS/Windows 3.1   |
              (drive C:)  |                   |
                          |___________________|
             partition 1  | DOS/Windows 3.1   |
              (drive C:)  | with Windows 95     |    _________________
                          |___________________|   |                 |
             partition 2  | Extended             |---|Logical DOS Data |
              (drive D:)  | partition              |   |_________________|
                          |___________________|



 In this layout, when you boot into partition 0, you can run
 Windows 3.1 on drive C.  Drive D is on the logical partition, which
 contains application data.  Partition 1 can either be hidden by System
 Commander or will appear as drive E, at your option.

 When you boot partition 1, Windows 95 will appear as drive C, and drive D
 is the same logical partition as appears when booting DOS/ Windows 3.1.
 Partition 0 can either be hidden or you can elect to have it appear as
 drive E in our example.

 Another feature of System Commander is the ability to make either Drive A
 or B bootable, although this does not work with certain BIOSes, or with
 operating systems that bypass the BIOS.

 SC has still another useful feature.  Actually, this one is vital.  SC
 detects any change in the root directory configuration  files by
 comparing them with its saved images.  Normally, if you  manually change
 your AUTOEXEC.BAT or CONFIG.SYS files, on the next boot into the same OS,
 SC will overwrite the images with the new versions.  This may not be what
 you wanted to do.

 To overcome this problem, SC can be set up to prompt the user before
 overwriting its image copies.  If the prompt is answered no, the boot
 proceeds using the files that are already in the root directory, thus
 sparing the images SC keeps.  You can then manually restore the root
 directory AUTOEXEC/CONFIG to the originals.  (I use a handy utility
 called Autocon to manage multiple configurations.)  Of course, SC can be
 set up to use multiple versions of DOS configuration files.  Each version
 would be a separate SC menu item, as mentioned earlier.  That would seem
 to be the most logical way to go, if you really need multiple
 AUTOEXEC.BAT or CONFIG.SYS files for different applications.

 This is not covered in the manual, but I have found it useful to keep a
 second copy of all image files in a separate directory.  Several times, I
 inadvertently told SC to overwrite its images.  And on one occasion,  I
 let Win95 run an unruly DOS game in Single Application DOS  Mode. The
 game hung up the computer, so I could not exit back to Win95.  I had to
 reboot.  Since Win95 adds a line to its AUTOEXEC.BAT to run a DOS app in
 SA mode,  System Commander kept bringing up that changed file, and the
 game kept loading, and hanging my machine.  Thats when I learned the
 wisdom of keeping a fresh copy of the proper file stashed away somewhere,
 so that I could replace the image in the SC directory.  Yes, I had also,
 dumbly, allowed SC to overwrite the image file with the version that ran
 the game!

 System Commander does sometimes misbehave.  I discovered a problem when I
 upgraded the program, after I had installed OS/2 Warp and Windows 95.
 When SC's menu appeared, Win95 was listed three times!  All attempts to
 delete the extra entries using SC's own utilities failed.  A V
 Communications' technician was able to talk me through the process, which
 was not something the average user would be able to figure out on their
 own.  It seems that Win95 adds code to the boot record of every
 partition.  This confused SC into thinking I had multiple installations
 of that OS.  The technician also told me how to bypass the OS/2 Boot
 Manager menu that had been appearing when I chose Warp from SC.  So now,
 I don't have to see the extra menu and make the OS/2 choice there also.


 I believe System Commander to be a unique and useful program for managing
 multiple operating systems.  The manual is well written and offers a
 wealth of information about different OSes and hard drive partitioning.
 There is an extensive troubleshooting section.  The installation disk
 even includes several typical main menu screens in PCX format, and a
 utility for capturing the user's actual menu.


 System Commander (current version - 2.11)
 V Communications, Inc
 4320 Stevens Creek Blvd., Suite 120
 San Jose, CA  95129
 (408) 296-4224


 John Campbell, again, provides a down-to-earth, step-by-step, description
 of a complex installation procedure. He is employed by the State of West
 Virginia's Unemployment Compensation Board as it's local office manager.
 John is a regular contributor to WindoWatch.





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    Programming Notes                                 A WindoWatch feature

                     Window Aspect: A Scripting Language
                    A Tutorial: Part Five Ghost BBS v3.20
                        Copyright 1995 by Gregg Hommel

 First.... I'm sorry that I missed writing a column last month. I was
 smack in the middle of finishing off GHOST BBS 3.20 for public release,
 and found myself in need of two additional hands, and at least twice as
 much time on the clock as there is normally. I tried putting Windows
 CLOCK.EXE on my DoubleSpaced drive, but even then, when I ran it, it
 still only had 24 hours in a day - but it was worth the try .

 As a result, I simply ran out of time, and could not finish this column
 before deadline.  Lois was mean and nasty about it, and laid a guilt trip
 on me that you wouldn't believe, but even then, I just did not have
 enough time to do everything. And since, through registration fees, GHOST
 BBS pays me, and Lois doesn't... well, you get the picture....   < Large
 and noisy yawn...lbl>

 In any case, GHOST BBS 3.20 is now finished, and I can get back to doing
 this, before Lois really gets nasty, so here we go....

 There is an old Polish saying that my mother used to use.  Since I have
 begun writing scripts, I have been partial to using myself. I can't
 remember the Polish, and thus, won't inflict that on you, but the English
 translation was something along the lines of...

 "The amazing thing is not how well the Dancing Bear dances... what is
 amazing is the fact that he dances at all!"

 GHOST BBS, in particular, is a "Dancing Bear".  To me, at times, the
 amazing thing about that script is not how well it does some of the
 things that it does, but rather, that it does them at all. (Such modesty!
 Some of this is due to his remarkable coding ability? The life of an
 editor is filled with temperamental writers!) A lot of what GHOST BBS can
 do is tied in with the use of the Windows INI file.

 I know that you are all familiar with the basic INI files used by Windows
 for it's own configuration information, and you all know that the various
 applications that you run under Windows usually have their own INI file
 for their configuration information.

 But the term configuration information can actually have a wide
 latitude in meaning. If we look at INI files as being files to store
 information, rather than just configuration data, where does that take
 us?

 To store information that a script application needs, we could use a
 text file. Wasp has the commands necessary to do that. But to store
 information in the file, we have to open the file (creating it if
 necessary, using different commands for each case, so as not to destroy
 previously stored information) for writing, locate the end of the file,
 and then write the information we want stored using some form of
 identification so we can locate it when we need it.

 To retrieve information, we have to open the file for a read, read a
 line from the file, and compare it's indicator  to that of the
 information we need.  If it doesn't compare, we have to read the next
 line, and go through the same process again, until we find what we want.
 All of this, both writing and reading, takes multiple lines of code,
 multiple if/then statements, and time while the script tries to locate
 the information needed.

 If, on the other hand, we use an INI format file,  and note, the
 extension doesn't need to be INI... it can be anything, so as long as we
 specify the full name, and, if the file is not in the \WINDOWS directory,
 the full path.  The procedure becomes so much simpler. Writing to an INI
 format file involves the single command, PROFILEWR.  If the INI format
 file doesn't exist it is created. If it does exist, the line being
 written is simply added to the file.

 Reading from an INI format file is equally as simple, involving a single
 command, PROFILERD. Using this, we can read either a string or an integer.
 If the locator for that particular line to be read doesn't exist, we are
 then returned a null string if reading a string, or a minus integer value,
 or an integer value. Otherwise, we are quickly and simply returned the
 value we need, within split seconds of time.

 To see how this might be of use to us, let's look at the INI format
 files which GHOST BBS 3.20 uses. This will show some ways they can be
 used, and perhaps help develop ideas for you....

 1) GHOST.INI - This one is the basic INI format file used by GHOST to
 store configuration data re: various run time parameters, file locations,
 etc.  BUT this file also stores a huge variety of information for GHOST.
 That information can include the name and city of the last person to
 call, filenames and so on, to pass to the virus scanner feature, text
 information which become lines in a DOS batch file used to open a door,
 and even the information regarding how your system was set up under
 PCP/Win before GHOST began running. This last makes it possible for GHOST
 to use it later in order to  restore the system to that same state it
 found when it shuts down.

 2) LANG#.PMT - These files, and there may be multiple ones, have the #
 replaced by a language number from 1 to 99. They store the various
 prompts which GHOST uses on the screen while it is running, utilizing
 each of any number of languages from 1 to 99. These files also include
 sections which are translation tables, so that GHOST can receive a prompt
 like O, as in the French Oui for yes, and understand that this is the
 equivalent in this language, of the basic prompt response Y for Yes in
 the default English mode.

 The prompts stored in this file can contain certain pre-defined variables
 in the form of @ONLEFT@  which GHOST will replace with information
 determined while it is running.  Since it has two main sections, one for
 ANSI mode, and the other for non-ANSI mode, they can also contain ANSI
 codes to change items like the colours, bold or flashing, and so on.

 3) GHOST.USR - this little critter is the basic user record file. Windows
 has a limit on the size of an INI format file of 64K, and storing user
 information in such a file can quickly go beyond that size. GHOST always
 checks the size of the actual user record file (see below) before writing
 a new user into it, and if the file is getting too large, it starts a new
 one. This USR file contains only one line per section, that being the
 information telling GHOST where the actual records for that user are
 located.  That is, in which of what might be multiple user record files,
 is the information for a specific user stored.

 4) USER#.REC - This is the INI format file which actually contains the
 information for a particular user which is pointed to by the GHOST.USR
 file. The first file used by GHOST is USER1.REC. As a GHOST user record
 database grows, and exceeds the pre-defined safe limit set in GHOST, new
 files are created, with an incremental number in them, for GHOSt to use.

 In this file is a section for each user, with the information they gave
 to GHOST when they first logged on and completed the new user
 questionnaire. Along with the users default transfer protocol (if set),
 there is information defined by the sysop re: security level, access to
 private areas on a GHOST system, and so on.

 Based upon the above, you can see that it is possible for an application
 to have, and use, more than one INI format file. This can be handy to
 keep configuration information separate from data used while the
 application is running and to modify what appears on screen, etc. GHOST
 BBS stores the different kinds of information it needs, in different INI
 format files, and the Wasp code simply uses the PROFILEWR and PROFILERD
 commands to access the correct file, as instructed.

 Those two commands are simplicity themselves to use, once you understand
 the format of an INI type file. Basically, an INI format file stores
 information in various groups or sections, distinguished by a section
 header, shown in the file as a name enclosed in square brackets, such as
 [Start Up], or [Last User]. In each section are lines which are the
 actual information stored, in the format of info_name=data  with,
 obviously, the text to the left of the  =  being the data indicator used
 to locate it, and the text or number to the right of the =  being the
 data stored there.

 The PROFILEWR command is a really remarkable little fellow, which
 combines the equivalent of a file open, create command, with a file
 open, append type of command. The format of the command is...
 PROFILEWR filename section_name indicator data

 1) filename can be any legitimate DOS file name. If it does not include
 a drive/path, the file is assumed to be in the \WINDOWS directory. If no
 extension is included, it is assumed to be INI. If, however, you want the
 file located in a particular directory, with a particular extension, then
 simply specify the full drive\path\filename.ext. Filename can be either a
 string constant specified for each PROFILEWR command (such as
 "f:\ghost\prompts\lang1.pmt") or a string variable containing such a
 filename.

 2) section_name is whatever name you want for a given section. Don't get too carried away with this. Remember, the maximum size of a string variable is 255 characters, so use something reasonably descrip- tive for your purposes. As example, in GHOST.INI, the information
 GHOST uses when it starts to determine certain run time parameters is in the [Start Up] section of GHOST.INI. Again, this can be a string constant, or a string variable, whichever suits your needs in the script.

 3) indicator is a string representing whatever is to the left of the =
 in an INI format file section line. Again, this can be whatever you want,
 but the same rules apply... don't make it too long, but do make it
 something descriptive to you as to purpose and use, etc. Remember, an INI
 format file is a text file, and can be read in any text editor. If you
 make things descriptive, it makes it easier to check for particular
 settings in that INI format file, and easier for you to remember, in
 code, what it is you want to write.

 4) data is of course, the data that you want written to the right of the
 = in this line. It can be a string, or an integer, and can be a
 constant or a variable.

 As example of using this, suppose I want to have my script change the
 value of the line in GHOST.INI that controls whether autobaud detection
 is on (1) or off (0). It is on now, and we want to turn it off. In GHOST,
 the GHOST.INI file is pre-defined as string variable S0, for a variety of
 reasons we won't go into here, the command to change this entry might be

  PROFILEWR S0 "Start Up" "autobaud" 0

 Or it could as easily be

  PROFILEWR S0 sec_name line_name autoval

 ..where sec_name is a string variable set to "Start Up", line_name is a
 string variable set to "autobaud" and autoval is an integer variable
 determined by a setting in a dialog box, in this example, 0.

 But the power of this command goes beyond just being able to write a
 value into a line in a file.

 If the file named doesn't exist, PROFILEWR will create it. If the
 section specified doesn't exist, PROFILEWR will create it. If the
 indicator line specified doesn't exist, PROFILEWR will create it. So,
 even if the file GHOST.INI does not exist, if my script issues the
 command above, I will end up with a file called GHOST.INI in my \ASPECT
 sub-directory (which is what S0 specifies), that contains the
 following...

 [Start Up]
 autobaud=0

 I don't have to check for it's existence, because PROFILEWR will create
 it if it doesn't exist, and append to it, if it does exist. Same goes for
 the section names in that INI format file, and even the lines in that
 section.

 All of this done with a single command in Wasp!

 The PROFILERD command is as equally remarkable in it's own way. The
 format of that command is almost identical, except that the last item
 (data) must be a variable of the correct type to receive the information
 read from the INI format file. But the other entries in the command can
 be of the same nature as in PROFILEWR, or PROFILERD filename section_name
 indicator data_variable which makes the command to READ the value of the
 autobaud setting in GHOST.INI something like

  PROFILERD S0 "Start Up" "autobaud" autoval

 So what's remarkable about this?  If the value being read is a string,
 and the line containing that data is not in existence, Wasp returns a null
 string for the variable. If you are reading an integer, and the line
 doesn't exist, Wasp returns a - value (generally -1) to indicate that the
 line doesn't exist.

 An integer stored in an INI format file isn't an integer.... if you use
 a string variable to receive the contents of the "line", then you get a
 string consisting of the number stored there. If you use an integer
 variable, you get the number itself, as an integer.

 This means that you can store an integer into an INI format file, and
 use it as a string in a dialog box if you need a string there, or as an
 integer, depending upon what kind of variable you use to read the data.

 And PROFILERD is fast. There is no need to search through the lines read
 from a text file or compare them to some value for an indicator that this
 is the right line, and so on. That's all done by PROFILERD. It opens the
 INI format file for a READ, searches for the section name included in the
 command and then searches under that for the line name included. It then
 reads the value of that line into the variable, using but one
 command...one single line of code instead of the multiple lines that
 would be needed to get the same data from a standard text file!

 But how can this be used, other than in the normal way, to set
 configuration parameters, etc.??

 Wasp 2.0 greatly diminishes the memory restraints we worked under with
 Wasp 1.0. Global variables are no where near the problem they were under
 Wasp 1.0, but there still are limits on them.  Even without those
 constraints, they take up global memory in the data tables, etc.
 Additionally, global variables can sometimes be tricky to deal with,
 especially in a longer script  with many sub-procedures. You just might,
 inadvertently, modify the value of that global variable in one procedure,
 only to find that modified value plays hell with another procedure that
 uses the same global variable.

 However if you use a local variable in a procedure that sets the original
 value of what used to be a global variable, and then write it to a
 section in an INI format file, the other procedure which requires that
 value can also use a local variable.  In other words, creating a
 PROFILERD command to set precisely the value you want for that variable,
 without worries about what another procedure might have done to the
 global variable.

 An INI format file can also give you the ability to pass data from one
 script to another. As you know, you can normally only do this using the
 internal global variables, such as S0, I0, and so on. But there are only
 ten of each type of variable in this category, and that may not be
 enough. You also have to be so very careful with those variables, since
 they are available to any script that you run, and any script can change
 their values. Those designaated values do not remain if you shut down
 PCP/Win and start it up again.

 If you store the values that you want to pass to another script in an INI
 format file, on the other hand, they are at that value unless/until you
 specifically change it in another script. And there isn't a ten variable
 limit on the data that can be passed. All you have to do is have one
 script write values to the INI format file, and the secondary script read
 them. It doesn't matter if the secondary script is run during this
 PCP/Win session, or another one. The values written to the INI format
 file remain, and can be read and used by any script you wish, at any
 time. Talk about being able to pass data from one script to another!

 Well, I see by the clock on the wall  -and the expression on Lois' face-
 that I'm getting long winded here.   I find INI format files to be
 fascinating, simple to use, and quite valuable in script writing, and
 tend to show that. But if I let this column go on any longer, Lois or
 Paul will be redlining it to cut it down in size, and we can't have that.
 We'll continue with some further discussions of using INI format files in
 the next column.

 Gregg Hommel is our resident Aspect and Procomm for Windows guru. As the
 Co-Host for the RIME Windows and Procomm conferences many have met him
 online where he modestly helps users solve problems.  He's the author of
 GHOST and serves on the WindoWatch editorial board.

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 A WindoWatch feature:                         Yet Another Internet Service


       Your Internet Provider: Is NetCruiser by NetCom in your future?
                        Copyright 1995 by Kyle Freeman

 By now you've probably heard more about the Internet than about O.J.
 Well, maybe not that much, but it's been the hottest topic in the
 computer world for some time now.  If you haven't already found an
 Internet provider, you're more than likely looking for one, assuming you
 haven't been turned off by the odious smarm of those Gramercy Press
 commercials.  One choice to consider is NetCom, a nationwide company
 providing Internet access in about 250 cities. This article will review
 NetCruiser, the proprietary software that NetCom provides to users for a
 basic account.

 Before getting to NetCruiser, however, let me make clear that NetCom will
 sell you a Point to Point Protocol (PPP) connection, as well as a Serial
 Line Internet Protocol (SLIP) connection, which will allow you to use any
 Internet software, like Netscape, WSFTP, Eudora, Chame-leon, and others,
 for about the same price as a NetCruiser account at $19.95 a month.  But
 NetCom's bread and butter comes from its sale of NetCruiser accounts.
 Here's what you get when you subscribe.

 First, NetCruiser software is free.  NetCom gives it away to entice you
 to get started.  I've seen stacks of them given away at computer shows,
 but if no such events occur near you, you can write to NetCom at 3031
 Tisch Way, San Jose, CA 95128, call them at 1-408-983-5970, or fax them
 at 1-408-983-1537, and they'll send you an attractive little package that
 contains a single floppy with NetCruiser and a booklet of tips about
 navigating around the Internet, with suggestions for sites to visit on
 the World Wide Web, Gopherspace, and ftp archives. NetCruiser is also
 sometimes sold for a nominal fee ($5 is what I've seen) at computer
 stores.

 Of all the pieces of Internet software I've tried, NetCruiser is by far
 the easiest to install and use.  Before you start, however, your system
 must meet some minimal requirements.  You need at least a 386 with 4
 megabytes of RAM, DOS 5.0 or later, Windows 3.1, and 4 megabytes of free
 disk space.  Assuming you have all that, once you get your NetCruiser
 disk, put it in your floppy drive, select RUN from Program Manager in
 Windows, then type A:setup (or B:setup), and follow the directions.
 You'll be prompted for your modem type (if your brand isn't on the list,
 Generic works well), its COM port, and its baud rate, so you need to know
 at least that much about your system.  But unlike Mosaic or Netscape or
 Chameleon, you don't need to know anything else.  One of the beauties of
 NetCruiser is that you can be a complete dummy and yet set it up and
 operate it with no sweat.

 Once you've gone through the initial setup steps, you'll be presented
 with a menu of phone numbers from which to choose your local server. With
 access sites in more than 250 cities and more being added nearly every
 day, you're sure to find one near you.  Once installed, it presents you
 with a toll-free 800 number to call to register.  You will get one free
 month, with 40 hours of peak time (Monday - Friday, 9am -midnight) and
 unlimited non-peak hours.  This is quite a good deal.  If you decide to
 keep your account, you pay a one-time $25 connect  fee and $19.95 a
 month.  If you don't want to continue, then you owe NetCom nothing.

 Now, what do you get for that?  Once you connect to NetCom, a simple but
 tidy tool bar with eleven icons appears across the top of your screen
 listing menu items above it.  If you move your cursor over the icons,
 messages at the bottom of the screen tell you about each one.  To launch
 any of them requires only a single click, a work saving feature for those
 who don't have a mouse with one of its buttons configured for a double
 click.  Let's take a brief look at all eleven.

 The first icon is a question mark, which is naturally the Help feature.
 It is quite extensive. Not only do you get explanations about each of the
 other icons, but Help includes discussions about the Internet, its
 etiquette, interesting sites to visit, and sections about how to operate
 NetCruiser, how to configure your modem, and how to use the menu items
 above the icons.  It is also remarkable, in comparison to other software
 programs, for its dry sense of humor.  In the section detail- ing how to
 configure your modem, for instance, you are warned that if NetCruiser is
 not set a certain way, "You will have unpleasant things happen."

 The next icon is Reading E-mail.  With a NetCom account you get an
 Internet address where anyone can send you Internet e-mail.  You choose
 the name you want to use and it doesn't have to be your own. Your alias
 could beTallTexan or HotMama, if you like, and so long as no one else at
 NetCom has that string of letters, it's yours, followed by
 @ix.netcom.com. You'll have some mail from NetCom the first time you log
 on that basically glad-hands you for having the excellent taste to try
 NetCom. Upon clicking the Read E-Mail icon, you get a dialog box with a
 choice: your inbox, which will look for your newest mail, and your saved
 mail. A single click on either of them brings up the desired result.

 Once you have a message open to read, NetCruiser provides an addi-tional
 tool bar of icons that perform e-mail functions.  These include
 responding, forwarding, saving, reading the next selected message, and a
 garbage can for deleting messages. When you choose to respond to an
 existing message to you, NetCruiser gives you the choice of whether or
 not to quote that message in your reply.  Once you choose that, you'll
 get a screen that includes some additional icons.  You can choose your
 address book, or to add an attachment, send a message, or finally cancel,
 cleverly represented by an envelope torn in two. This screen is exactly
 the same as the one you get in tool bar icon number 3, which is Send
 E-Mail.  You would use this, of course, when you were sending a new
 message that wasn't a reply to one you received.

 The one thing the Send E-mail function doesn't allow you to do is import
 text into your mail.  That means all your responses have to be done
 online, which is a hassle.  You can send some pretyped text as an
 attachment if you really need to send something you just don't have the
 time or patience to type out while logged in, but the absence of an
 import feature is a severe handicap for NetCruiser.  You can, as I
 mentioned earlier, log into NetCom with NetCruiser after you've con-
 figured it to autoload NetCom's winsock.dll, minimize NetCruiser, and
 then call up Eudora for your mail.  If your mail-writing demands are
 heavy, you'll no doubt want to do that.  On the other hand, the
 programmers at NetCom are constantly working on new versions, 1.6 is the
 current one. This is sure to be a feature they will want to refine.

 The World Wide Web icon is next.  When you click it, you're trans-ported
 to NetCom's home page.  It contains a number of things you'll find
 useful, such as a FAQ about using NetCruiser and a down-loadable version
 of Accessing the Internet by David Peal, published by Sybex, which uses
 NetCruiser as its model.  You are also given the option to take tours to
 Health, Education, Government, Business, and Scientific destinations on
 the WWW.  If you already know where you'd like to go, at the top of the
 screen is a command line with the http address of NetCom.  You can put
 your cursor there and type your desired address.  Otherwise, you can take
 any of the tours of sample spots NetCom provides and go from there.

 The Web browser has its own series of icons, of course.  They include
 opening a local file, saving the current document, opening your book-
 mark file to save the current site or go to one you've previously saved
 as a bookmark, and a search feature that will look for any string in the
 current document.  The command line itself has a drop-down arrow that you
 can use to revisit any of the addresses you've visited that session.  So
 if you've gone ten steps down some series of menus and would like to go
 back to the first one, you can find it with this menu, click, and presto!
 you're back to the earlier screen.  Icons also exist for returning to the
 NetCom home page and two that resemble the forward and backward signs on
 VCRs and tape machines to move you to the next document or the previous
 one.

 You can post articles to UseNet through the Read UseNet Groups program as
 responses to articles you read there, or you can click the Post to UseNet
 Groups icon to send new articles that aren't responses.  I've never done
 the latter, so I can't tell you about the problems or happy circumstances
 surrounding that feature.  I've answered mess-ages I read, for which the
 procedure was much like the Send E-Mail part of NetCruiser, that is, easy
 to do with self-explanatory icons.

 For those who want to download uuencoded image files (and you know who
 you are!), you may be disappointed to learn that NetCruiser, as currently
 implemented, does not decode your pictures automatically.  It will save
 them as 00000001.msg, 00000002.msg, etc.  You have to do the decoding
 yourself.  There is a way, however, with a program called WinVn, to
 decode such images automatically while they are downloading. It involves
 the same procedure I mentioned above of starting NetCruiser with its own
 winsock.dll and minimizing it once connected, then starting WinVn.

 You can find out exactly how to do this and many other similar
 procedures, such as using Netscape, Eudora, and Wincode with NetCruiser,
 by contacting Lee Johnson, self-styled as "the HelpnHand." He has
 prepared a series of instructions on where to find those programs and how
 to set them up to work with NetCruiser.  You can contact him at
 lrj@ix.netcom.com.  He is one of those rare souls who seems to live in
 order to help others.  Ask him for the instructions on whatever of these
 issues you're concerned about and you'll get an answer right away, along
 with a list of all the other issues on which he has prepared
 instructions.  He can also usually be contacted most nights on IRC
 channel #newu at 9 pm CST. Which brings me to the last icon.  I can also
 tell you very little about Internet Relay Chat.  NetCruiser's IRC gives
 you a choice to connect to EFnet or to NetCom's local IRC network.
 Because I don't really care about chatting, I've only tried it once, just
 so I could write about it in this article.  Either because I had only the
 slightest idea of what I was doing, or maybe because I called at 4 AM  on
 Saturday morning, I got no answer from anyone.

 Let me add also that I rarely had any trouble logging onto NetCom.  I've
 heard others complain that too often the lines were busy or down,
 preventing them from getting online.  This has occurred to me only a
 couple of times in three months. I tend to log on in what Hamlet refers
 to as the very witching time of night, when churchyards yawn and Hell
 itself breathes forth contagion to this world.  There is naturally less
 traffic at these hours, so my experience may not be representative of
 more normal practice.  But no doubt every major provider has occasional
 trouble keeping all its lines open, so NetCom is probably no worse than
 others.

 So, if you're looking for a complete package of Internet tools in an
 easy-to-set-up, easy-to-use form, NetCom's NetCruiser fills that bill of
 fare quite well.  It would also be a good choice for people of markedly
 different computer skills who want to share the same machine. So if
 you're a computer whiz, but your husband is a computer klutz, NetCruiser
 would be a good choice for the two of you.  You could use all your
 favorite but hard to set up programs, while he could use the easy
 NetCruiser menus.  Unless you're expert enough to set up your own TCP/IP
 stacks, configure your software to accept the IP addresses of your
 provider, take advantage of the very best program for each Internet
 activity, and you can get a cheaper price for a provider, NetCruiser
 isn't something you'll want to ignore.  All in all, it's worth a serious
 look.

 Kyle Freeman, a former teacher, now works as a computer consultant in the
 San Francisco area.  He is a regular WindoWatch contributor.



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            A Product Review....                        TIME and CHAOS


                     THERE'S NOT A MOMENT TO LOSE!
                    Copyright 1995 by Frank McGowan

 Backward, turn backward, O Time in thy flight.

 Alas, much as Shelley implored -or was it Keats? I never have been able
 to keep them straight-, theres no reversing the inexorable transit of
 time toward its inevitable end. In a society with such a negative
 attitude towards whats gone before, as exemplified by the deplorable
 insult, Youre history!, the only important time is that which is yet
 to arrive.

 Time is such a baffling concept, that its been the subject of
 innumerable poems, essays, philosophical discussions, and studies by
 theoretical physicists. Why is it, as Einstein mused, that ten seconds
 sitting on a hot stove is so much longer than ten seconds listening to
 Mozart -or was it Bach ?  To the pragmatist, time and money are
 interchangeable: wasting time is tantamount to burning greenbacks.
 Businessmen/women would rather have their BMW repossessed than squander
 precious moments that could be used cooking up schemes for adding to the
 bottom line.

 It is no surprise then that the bright minds of the software industry are
 putting so much effort into designing programs they hope will appeal to
 the hard-headed strivers in the ranks of middle manage-ment. Not for them
 Walt Whitman's dictum to "loaf and invite the soul"! These poor souls
 havent a moment to spare. You could probably consider them "Type
 A-plus."  It is for them that the software sub-genre of personal
 information managers has been created. PIM's  (to use the current TLA)
 purport to help the overburdened executive do what humanity has hankered
 to do since we first understood that our existence is temporal: manage
 time.

 As you may have inferred, I am a hardened skeptic when it comes to time
 management. My idea of a nifty time management device is a pocket large
 enough to hold a bunch of paper slips with illegible notes scribbled on
 them, and a small daily calendar (for things too important to entrust to
 one of my little slips of paper). The little slips of paper usually wind
 up on top of my bureau in an untidy heap, anchored by the daily calendar
 so they wont blow all over the bedroom, thereby driving Sue to
 distraction. As long as the papers stay on the bureau, shes able to turn
 a blind eye to the mess, though it takes some effort. Nevertheless, I try
 to keep an open mind (why are you cocking your eyebrow, Sue?), so when I
 was asked to try out a time management program called Time and Chaos, I
 agreed. After all, I had plenty of time on my hands...

 Okay, I hear you all protesting: "Maybe you've got gobs of time to spare,
 but I don't. Get on with this! Please get to the point! Quit annoying us
 with pseudo-intellectual noodling. Is Time and Chaos worth checking out
 or not?

 Yes.

 Satisfied?  If not, read on......

 Time and  Chaos (or T&C) makes a lot of sense even to such a show me
 person as myself.  I like it so much that Ive stuck it into my Startup
 group in place of the Calendar file I had put there a few months ago. The
 only big drawback is that you need to have your computer handy to use it
 -it doesn't quite fit into my pants pocket.  Since most of you are,
 obviously, never too far from your PC, this isnt such a major flaw. And
 besides, you can print out what you need, stick it on top of your bureau
 and drive your mate to distraction just like me!

 The designers of Time and Chaos  have clearly studied their predecessors
 and competitors closely and have found a good balance between richness
 and usability. There are enough cool features on Time and Chaos to
 satisfy the nerdiest, but theyre only there if you want and/or need
 them. The Help files provide all the guidance you need to get up to speed
 quickly.  For the most part the interface is reasonably intuitive,
 although the Done button on the Todo list led me astray. I thought it
 meant I was done entering items to the list, but it really means the item
 has been done. The screen is organized nicely into four main sections:
 calendar, shown as the current month (upper left); appointment list
 (upper right); Todo list (lower left): and Phone book (lower right).


 The calendar section is where you select the day/month/year you want to
 schedule. To get to another day in the current month, you just point and
 click. Any appointments or todos for that day show up. Arrows and double
 arrows let you jump forward or backward to prior or subsequent months or
 years. I suppose if you have a major anniversary coming up in two years,
 it might be prudent to note that as a safeguard against letting it slip
 past. The backward move is helpful when you need to remember where you
 were or what you were doing at a particular moment on any given day. (I
 must be watching too much O.J.)

 Adding chores to your Todo list is pretty simple, and you even get to
 rate them from Critical to Work it In (my version would be If I Feel Up
 To It). Delete them as you do them, too, by selecting the item, then
 pressing the Delete tab on the Todo window.  The program even nags you a
 bit by asking Are you sure?  If you have any chores on the Todo list
 you didn't get around to, they carry over to the next day and the next
 until you finally get them done or, if youre out of patience, delete
 them.

 The Phone Book feature includes, among many pleasing options, the ability
 to split your phone directory into white and yellow pages. You can create
 different categories for your listings, to keep social numbers separate
 from business numbers. As you would expect, the program has an Autodialer
 function, if you have a modem. (If you dont have a modem, how are you
 reading this?) There are a slew of other goodies included in the Phone
 Book function that should make life a lot easier, if no less complicated.
 Theres even an integrated word processing function built into the Phone
 function that supports Windows versions of AmiPro, WordPerfect and Word.
 I don't know if they've thought of everything, but they've come pretty
 darned close. You can create appointment lists and move around quickly to
 set up schedules literally months or years in advance (for some reason a
 scene from Casablanca comes to mind - Barfly: What are you doing tomorrow
 night, Rick? Rick: I never plan that far ahead.) To enter an appointment,
 you select the day, then click the button labeled Enter New Appointment,
 and you're all set.

 You can also set an alarm for each appointment. After all, it's no good
 having an appointment scheduled with your dentist whos 45 minutes away,
 if you dont remember it at least 45 minutes ahead of time. You can also
 connect appointments to your phone book, so you can see all appointments
 you have with any particular person listed there. A feature I especially
 like is the Timebar. If you want to see how high your stress level will
 go over the next few days or weeks, or you want to understand why its as
 high as its been lately, click this Menu. Up pops a grid, laid out for
 last month, this month and next month, showing you your time blocks for
 each day of each month. The more blue bars, the higher the stress, at
 least thats my way of interpreting this data.   And its right there in
 front of you. One suggestion: I think it would be a good idea for
 different colors to be used, so you could differentiate good time
 blocks from bad ones. So, if Ive set aside five hours next Saturday
 for golf, that might be shown in green. But if Ive set aside two hours
 for a meeting with a difficult client, that ought to be displayed in red.
 One or two minor cavils: Why no shortcuts on the menus? Sure, once Ive
 opened the File menu I can see that Ctrl-X would have gotten me to Exit
 without opening the menu, but why no x in Exit now that I'm there? And
 please run the Spell program on your message files. Permenently? You
 may be hooked on phonics, but your spell checker isn't.

 Other than that, I think Time & Chaos is a winner, though I remain
 unpersuaded that a computer is a more convenient time manager than scraps
 of paper. I am willing to grant that it's a lot neater. It's still not as
 easy to stuff into my pants pocket, though.  Time and Chaos is produced
 by:

 iSBiSTER International, Inc.			CompuServe ID: 74017,3424
 1111 Beltline Road, Suite 204		        BBS Support: 214-530-2762
 Garland, Texas 75040 * 	                        Fax: 214-530-6566
 Voice 214 495-6724
 The price is $29.95, plus shipping.

 Frank McGowan is a computer consultant and college teacher. A former
 science writer, he brings his considerable talents to WindoWatch as one
 of our regular contributors.

                                     ww










        *               *               *               *               *









                             A WindoWatch feature


                               IDIOTS-REDUX

                        Copyright 1995 by  Bob Miller


 More idiotic ramblings from the PC Press.

 PC World - August - page 124

 [regarding MSN] Never before has client software for an online service
 shipped in the same box as an operating system.

 BM>Ever hear of Apple?  How about Warp?



 PC World - August - page 31

 Everyone wants  a CD-ROM drive on their desktop.

 BM>English 101 anyone?  Everyone wants ... on HIS desktop.


 PC World - August - page 88

 For one thing, the option to have a permanent swap file - which in the
 past could permanently occupy 20 MB or more - no longer exists.

 BM>You shouldn't use it but it exists.  And only morons (or those doing
 full color graphics) have 20 MB PSF's.


 Some silliness in the Summer 1995 issue of  GE2k:
 the Gateway  2000 Magazine. Page 10.

 Most files downloaded from a BBS, or other online service, come in the
 form of a self-extracting file which normally has an .exe extension.

 BM>Not the BBS's that I frequent.  Indeed, you would be very hard pressed
 to find any BBS -except a manufacturer's- that had .exe files on it. ZIP
 is the standard except for the diehards who prefer ARJ.


 Summer 1995 GE2k Page 35.

 If you are planning on placing the TEMP directory in a RAM drive, you
 should have at least 8 MB of RAM......With 8 MB of RAM, you can set up a
 3 MB RAM drive and still have plenty of memory left for other resources.

 BM>Rarely have I seen such a short paragraph with so many errors.  If you
 are planning on using a RAM drive, TEMP is the last thing you should use
 it for.  Most programs don't use temp files and those that do, use large
 ones.  Try printing a three page WinWord document with two fonts, two
 point sizes and a graphic.  The temp file Print Manager generates can be
 over 10 MB in size.  If the RAM drive fills up, the system will crash
 _hard_ and you will lose any unsaved work.  8 MB is the bare minimum for
 WFWG to even run in with any degree of stability.  You are going to steal
 37% of that precious memory for a RAM drive?  For TEMP files?

 _Ridiculous_ in the extreme.  If you must use a RAM drive with Windows,
 the absolute minimum amount of memory you need is 24 MB (16 for Windows
 and its apps plus 8 for the RAM drive).  And it is still silly.


 From the paragraph preceding that one:

 ...these files will not be deleted.  Why is this bad?  Because over time,
 these .TMP files will accumulate [true enough] and suck up your system
 resources, which can lead to those "out of memory" messages.....

 BM>No, Mr. Technical Consultant and Mr. Senior Project Manager, files (of
 any kind) do _not_ "suck up" system resources.  5 files or 50,000 files
 use exactly the same amount of system resources.  Zero.

 Windows Magazine August Page 241

 Fax cards supporting the emerging class 2 standard.....work better with
 ......Windows 95.  Only V.34 devices offer class 2 fax.

 BM>Please don't tell that to my old Aceex 14,400 modem.  It has been
 using class 2 for a couple of years and I'd hate for it to stop.


 PC Mag August Page 422

 I'd like to be able to check whether a particular disk drive has
 sufficient space before beginning to use an application.  Can you do this
 with a batch file?

 BM>The good news is there is an easy way .... The bad news is that you
 have to enter the number of bytes in hexadecimal...... [followed by a
 lengthy batch file and an explanation of hexadecimal calculations].

 Something is wrong with DIR?  It seems to give me the disk space
 remaining without such silliness.

 Windows  July  Page 277.

 We had problems with the video drivers supplied by Number
 Nine.....dropped more than two thirds of the total frames averaging 9.3
 out of 30, in a test.  Number Nine sent new drivers....the video results
 immediately improved. ... However, the new drivers repeatedly caused
 General Protection Faults..... Overall, ... ranked first in our testing.

 BM>How bad could the others have been if this was number one?


 Windows July Page 248

 Make sure MSCDEX is the last item listed in your Autoexec.bat file.
 Otherwise, it will simply take over the whole upper memory space and
 everything else will get dumped into conventional memory.

 BM>It will?  Gee, that must be news to the 40,000,000 intelligent people
 who load it early so that Smartdrive can cache it.  And our other stuff
 still loads high.


 Windows June Page 118

 Try using an 8 MB swap file for 12 MB RAM.

 BM>Try using 4 - it will work much better.


 Windows Page 119

 If you run standard Windows 3.1 and don't see the "enable 32 bit disk
 access" check box, it means that your disk  controller isn't compatible
 with this feature.

 BM>It does no such thing.  Maybe your Windows was installed from a SCSI
 drive or your hard disk isn't set up right in CMOS or someone used odd
 partitioning software or several other possibilities.  An incompatible
 hard disk is just one of several choices.


 Windows Page 182

 If your app supports a temporary swap space (Adobe Photoshop does)
 ......your second option is to create a RAM disk for use as temporary
 file space.....that should boost performance.

 BM>Since that program likes 30-70 MB as a swap file, that would be quite
 a machine that has that large a ram disk.


 Windows Page 188

 Many applications have their own print spooling utility.....Turn off
 Print Manager to eliminate this double spooling.....Remember to turn
 Print Manager back on...or your system will hang up waiting for Print
 Manager instructions.

 BM>Really?  Every time I turn PM off, my system works just fine.  Indeed, I
 have some difficulty in figuring out how a program that is off can be
 sending instructions.


 Windows Page 211

 MS DOS wants about 45 KB of the 64 KB HMA.....if you use Double-space,
 it'll gulp about 12k of the HMA. The Command interpreter will sip about 2
 KB.  All this leaves only about 3 KB which is just enough space for six
 buffers.  Fortunately, MS-DOS itself includes 15 buffers by default, so
 under the above conditions you can write a BUFFERS=21 to soak up that
 last drop of the memory pool.

 BM>Really?  MS DOS does not include 15 buffers, and only 17 will fit in
 the above scenario.  Why not try something before you write about it?

 Same article

 If you use SmartDrive, you may not need any of them.

 BM>Correct - as long as you want hopelessly slow floppy access.


 PC World July Page 52

 As of March, we're paying $30 per user to run the pre-release version of
 the software [Win 95 Preview] on the machines of an additional 30 users.

 BM>Gee, the rest of the world only paid $32 per FIVE users to
 participate.


 PC Computing July p.53 Hall of Idiot's Fame Star John Dvorak

 A friend who said "I have it from deep within the Windows 95 programming
 group that the real product [Win95] will not be ready until November.
 Period!"

 BM>Does this bear any resemblance to a virtually identical comment
 (although attributed directly to a source rather than a friend) that
 appeared last month in a different publication?  Could it be that his
 record of 2153 consecutive wrong predictions on the future of computing
 have so bewildered him that he is starting to repeat himself?


 Infoworld  July 12  page 3.

 You have chosen to go with Microsoft Office when a package like Claris
 Works would do the job for most of your users.

 This is too silly to even discuss.  Claris Works is a competitor for MS
 Works (and nowhere near as good).  To say that it will "do the job for
 most of your users" boggles the mind unless you have very low level
 workers.

 InfoWorld July 3  Page 54

 The Gateway system locks with a password, not a case lock


 InfoWorld July 3 Page 56

 Password protection or keyboard lock?  Gateway: both.

 BM>Confused, are we?  Or did the system lock vanish between pages?


 The Grand Prize Idiot of The Month Award, however, goes to Robert Cringly
 for his totally moronic column in Infoworld in which he claimed that
 Win95 would be shipped with a hardware dongle.   That one is very hard to
 top.  OTOH, Dvorak will, no doubt, come roaring back next month.

 Idiots Redux  is the invention of Bob Miller who has a huge collection of
 Conference Host assignments from both RIME and Ilink. His newest is the
 Ilink Windows95 conference . A very knowledgeable Windows writer, Bob is
 the head of a Mental Health Agency and can be found at
 bob.miller@channel1.com He and Stanley are regular WindoWatch contributors.

                                       ww












        *               *               *               *               *







                             The Summer of Ninety-five

                                Super Programmers
                         Copyright 1995 by Peter Neuendorffer

 Some of my friends, those that I have left... grin slyly,  when I say I'm a programmer and say "Oh, you write viruses, ho ho" or "I bet
 you have sex on the Internet." So I have decided once and for all to
 put the record straight about the life of the information jockey.

 It was just the end of another day in the life of me, a super
 program-mer. Single-handedly I had discovered a completely undocumented
 loop processor so that I could let Windows process events that were
 waiting. In VB it was called do events but it was called something
 completely different in Delphi. And I'm not telling anyone what it is.
 You'll never find it. Its hidden deep in a help file forever.

 All day the phone rang off the hook. People begged me to solve their
 hardware, software, and personal problems, and I made polite noises,
 hardly containing my eagerness to return to typing at my computer.

 By 3 PM I had foiled the dreaded longint parameter pass that had
 threatened to disable my file searcher. Then, the smug realization that
 Dot and Dot Dot directory referents were potentially recursive and led to
 endless loops. Conquering null-terminated strings was close at hand.

 As the sun sank, I checked my mailbox and found no checks. But there was
 yet another missile [sic] from Microsoft about Windows 95. This one was
 even more colorful and glossier than the last. I found myself saying,
 "No, that's not it." I was kind of hoping since they think I'm a
 developer that they would send me a $500.00 developer package. But I
 dream. As I turned to go back upstairs, mild mannered computer programmer
 Peter Neuendorffer, clutching my fifth cup of coffee of the day in my
 sweat-soaked fingers, I heard a whimper behind me, presumably at
 eye-level, but possibly a mere transient phantom of memory.

 It was none other than Captain Alice, commandeer of the program-mers
 action starship, fellow super-programmer, arriving from another cyber
 virtual hacker userfriendly UNIX WWW interactive newbie adventure in
 Interface. She was in town covering the covered bridges convention, and
 dropped by to sweep my porch, or so she claimed.

 She was covered in high ASCII and not too stable. She frantically brushed
 off several Constucts that were clinging to her, exclaiming "These wild
 pointers are hell on my allergies." Then she stepped out of her ship, a XX
 10 Googolgoogol with a detachable edible hard drive. She says the traffic
 out on the suprahighway is murder what with all the Nintendo players
 graduating. At first she made little sense, but together we initialized
 her speech variables and the garbage level subsided.

 She says that today, she was able to save the day, and yet again, TV
 guide will arrive somewhat on time, Federal Express will drive it's
 trucks tomorrow, and the ATM's will work. Though they won't temporarily
 process certain requests. She says actually, there are Daemons out there
 whose job it is to disable certain computational functions in order to
 prevent a manual override inherent in simplex based systems. It's a UNIX
 thing. I waited at the doorway as Alice decontaminated herself of foul
 test data used in the day's structured design march. I helped Alice
 unload several hundred pounds of client specifications down the cellar
 steps.

 Alice cleaned up, we went out ballroom dancing, then settled down to
 creating a temporary universe in which we could meditate and get some
 respite from the exigencies of reserved word conflicts. Although neither
 of us are Slackers, we both are disenchanted with the corporate life, and
 sooner or later hope to settle down in a depressed area and open a small
 greasy spoon. If you care to join us, write us a note care of

 petern@channel1.com.




 Peter and Alice can be found  on CDROM doing their thing. When Alice was
 first discovered on the Internet she took the surfers by storm with her
 modest and unassuming demeanor.  She is much beloved. She urged Peter to
 develop Windows95 many years ago, but he just wouldn't listen.... After
 Gates introduces '95 late this month she promises to forget about Peter's
 goof  but until then the beat goes on as we will hear in the following:



 I got a letter from the noted Present-ist and my friend, Alice A. today.
 She has been vacationing on the Isles of Shoals, ten miles off of
 Portsmouth, New Hampshire. She says that everyone there has Windows 95,
 the final release, and questioned why I didn't. Again!

 On Star Island, they are a special test site to install printer drivers
 in the surf and mist, and under adverse weather conditions. She says that
 all has gone well so far. She has taught the whales to install their own
 wallpaper, and has successfully installed the entire Yellow Pages for
 Greater Portsmouth and made an animated feature about starfish.

 Alice says she is at last free from DOS command lines, and will never
 ever look an extension in the face again - or "bad command or file name."
 Mr. Parchmont, custodian of the Grand Hotel on Star Island, has seen the
 light for the first time, and is ordering a complete Office Suite for his
 box. She has to restrain him, however, because he keeps trying to sign up
 for the Microsoft Network, and will talk of nothing else but Windows 95's
 ease of use, neglecting his chores such as fixing the hotel rainspouts.

 Alice says she is working on a new on-line service. With one mouse click
 you can get a new operating system. Up in the Isles of Shoals they are
 not worried about restraint of trade. In fact, up until the advent of the
 modem, everything that came onto or off of Star Island was brought by the
 ferry from the Mainland.

 There is a treacherous breakwater between Star Island and Apple-dore.
 Alice has successfully installed Windows 95 while sitting on this
 breakwater at low tide. She promises to send herself to me by modem soon,
 as soon as she figures out how to use the communications package that
 came with the modem. With the advent of Windows 95 at the Isles of
 Shoals, once more the townsfolk can converse with the seagulls. Me, too!
 Alice has such a long memory....

 Peter Neuendorffer creates Alice adventures when he is not creating new
 software.







        *               *               *               *               *














  A History Lesson


                        A Brief History of the Computer
                        Copyright 1995 by Jim Gunn

 Today we take the ubiquitous computer for granted. It and the software
 we've come to depend on, are an everyday appliance. It is important to
 look back through the years at all the people and companies that
 contributed to the success of our beloved industry.

 1642

 A nineteen year old hacker named Blaise Pascal,  - we're not sure if that
 was his real name or his handle - invents the original computer. This
 pioneering system had no graphical interface and used a stylus for the
 command line. While Blaise had high hopes, it did not catch on as well as
 he hoped.

 The basic problem was with technical support. Neither the telephone nor
 on hold music had been invented yet. Messenger pigeons were tried but
 many of them croaked while in a holding pattern for the single tech rep.
 Thus when things went wrong, there was no practical way to call for help.

 Now-a-days, this problem doesn't exist since "on hold music" has become
 commonplace. We can listen to in on almost any technical support line for
 as long as we want.

 1692

 Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz invents the math co-processor. The computer
 could then multiply and divide as well as add and subtract. Leibniz's
 invention was quickly adopted by all the mail order outfits of the time.
 They in turn created the list price versus the real price marketing
 gimmick.

 1833

 Charles Babbage proposes the first supercomputer. He conned the British
 government into footing part of the bill, but mostly spent his own
 fortune on it. Nine years and 27,000 pounds later, the whole project was
 kaput and nothing ever really came of it. In modern times Seymour Cray
 has subsequently perfected this process.

 1842

 Augusta Ada Lovelace invents the first computer hobbyist magazine. She
 read a description of Charlie Babbages's system, written by an unknown
 Italian engineer. Augusta promptly copied this, made up a whole lot of
 extra stuff that was all theory and published it. Lovelace made all the
 profits while the engineer had to go into consulting to earn a living.

 Her publication enjoyed widespread popularity for a while. Then it seems
 that she proceeded to promote the super computer as a means of predicting
 the outcome of horse races and actually constructed and used the thing.
 The readership believed all this because, after all, they had seen it in
 writing, so it must be true.

 When the results turned out to be not quite as accurate as desired, she
 tried to pull a cover up. However, throughout Europe there was a network
 of pages, outriders, and messenger pigeons which quickly spread the word
 that the super computer was flawed. Augusta was eventually forced to
 admit that there was a problem and had to implement a replacement program
 which cost most of the profits from her endeavor. On her deathbed, she
 still contended that the erroneous calculations only occurred in a
 minuscule number of instances.

 1944

 Harvard University unveils the Mark I Automatic Sequence Controlled
 Calculator. This, at last, was a true electronic calculating machine and
 is considered the first computer as we know it today. Features included
 being slower than the user wanted, miscalculating and it stayed broken
 most of the time. IBM actually paid for it and the modern age had
 arrived.

 1946

 ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) is introduced. The
 age of the vacuum tube had arrived. ENIAC built upon the success of the
 Mark I by introducing the "bug" while maintaining all of the former's
 features.

 1951

 Remington Rand introduces the UNIVAC computer. Now the computer was
 commercially available to businesses but hobbyists would still have to
 wait a bit. In reality all they had done was purchase the ENIAC, renamed
 it, and began selling copies. Later this would be termed cloning.

 1954

 IBM enters the computer fray big time with the 752. This is significant
 for some reason or other. The author, having toyed briefly with one is
 not too sure why. There was a 751, but it was just another ENIAC.

 The commercial computer age was fully upon us at this point. Instances of
 how useful the computer had become were everywhere. For example, in the
 previous decade, an aircraft would take six to nine months to design and
 reach production. Now that time period was shortened to three to five
 years with the aid of a computer. In only two more decades, advances in
 computational power would be such, that the period would be further
 reduced to seven to fifteen years. Progress was inexorable.

 1959

 Jack Kilby and Robert N. Noyce invent the microprocessor. This begins a
 whole new era for the computer industry. Noyce goes on to found Intel
 corporation. Intel releases a new microprocessor model every few weeks
 from then on. Thirty-five years later it finally becomes useful with the
 release of the registered version of DOOM.

 1964

 IBM introduces the concept of If you can get one, it's obsolete, with the
 shipment of their 360 series computers. The system/360 revolutionizes the
 computing industry. Everything that had been previously programmed no
 longer worked. Many companies not only installed the new systems, but
 actually paid extra for "emulator" packages which allowed their programs
 run. IBM secretly authorized sales people to treat customers to alcoholic
 beverages even though there was a strict corporate policy to the
 contrary.

 1976

 Stephen G. Wozniak and Steven Jobs invent the Apple computer in their
 garage. They were attempting to repair the transmission on a '59 DeSoto
 at the time.

 The first model was named Lisa after one of their daughters, the later
 version was named "Mac" after one of their trucks. They succeeded
 mightily with their invention. Millions were sold, hundreds were used.
 Having only a single button on their mouse was the only limitation.

 The main result of all their efforts was a really neat-o Super Bowl ad.

 1981

 IBM introduces the Personal Computer (PC). This was wildly successful and
 eventually reached a market share of 75%. Considering that IBM was the
 only manufacturer at the time, this was indeed a notable achievement.
 Only the near bankruptcy of the early 90's will ever surpass this in the
 corporate annals.

 In addition, the PC provided computing capabilities to the average
 citizen.

 Growth was slow at first, but as time passed, the number of individuals
 having a computer on their desk or in their den reached epidemic
 proportions. Nothing useful has been accomplished ever since.

 1990

 Microsoft introduces their hugely successful version of Windows, 3.0.
 Suddenly every PC in the world has a graphical user interface - suddenly
 every PC in the world is underpowered. Taking the industry by storm, icon
 collecting became the national pastime.

 A significant side effect is the growth of bulletin board systems. From
 the beginning of the home computing age, bulletin boards had been the
 territory of an elite cadre of highly sophisticated computer enthusiasts.
 With the introduction of Windows 3.0, this changed entirely. Like Sam
 Colt's revolver, all men were now equal. Anyone could send electronic
 messages stating the stupidest things possible with Windows as the core
 subject.  Everyone had a computer, Windows, an opinion; no one had a
 clue.

 A couple of years later, Windows was revised to version 3.1. The
 significant changes were: TrueType font collecting replaced icons as the
 hobby of the masses and all UAEs (Unexpected Application Errors) were
 banished by the introduction of the GPF (General Protection Fault).
 Everyone was relieved that they no longer experienced UAEs and considered
 the new version extremely stable. A clue was still not included.

 1992

 Gateway 2000, a dairy farm in South Dakota, finally perfects "on hold"
 music. It is now available continuously via an 800 number.

 1995

 Microsoft Windows 95 appears. It is impossible to find a 5081 punched card.

 Repent, the end is near.

 Jim Gunn is a weird guy who has been dabbling with computers pretty much
 forever. His main hobby is being president of Sterling Consulting in Salt
 Lake City (a.k.a. Salt Puddle), Utah.




                                ww











        *               *               *               *               *








                         Reflections of a Modem Junkie
                      Copyright 1995 by Leonard Grossman


 This may be the greatest moment in the history of online communications.
 Right now internet access is relatively cheap and, for those who have
 enough interest in computers to read this magazine, it is relatively
 easy. . . .and then again, it may not last!

 Basic internet accounts range upwards from $10 a month for a shell
 account to slightly more than twice that amount for full access.  With
 the advent of new software utilities like Slipknot, which enables Web
 access even from a shell account, almost everyone can afford to get
 online.  And right now the internet remains, for the most part the
 relatively open system that has made it such an efficient and effective
 means of sharing information and infotainment.  But both cheap access and
 the very openness of the system are under attack!

 In addition to the local and national Internet access providers like MCS,
 InterAccess,  Netcom,  WWA, the older large commercial online services
 like Compuserve, Prodigy and America Online (AOL) are really getting into
 the act. The competition is hot.  On some usenet groups the current joke
 is that some of us have received enough pro-motional discs containing the
 front end software for America On Line that we could back up Win95,  or
 even OS/2.  It seems a new disk is in the mail every few weeks.  Every
 few days one of the major services announces additions to its internet
 services.

 Why are the older providers working so hard to hook us now? Be-cause
 Win95 is now scheduled for release on the 24th of August of this year.
 Whether or not it is actually released on time, its release will be one
 more factor in the great sea of change in the world of online
 communications expected to occur in the next year or so.  Just as almost
 every machine sold today has Prodigy or AOL already installed, as well as
 DOS and Windows, within a few months every new machine will contain Win95
 and with it the online software for the Microsoft Network (MSN).  When
 you boot up Win95, the MSN icon will be waiting on the desktop.  Just
 click and you can register online - if you have your credit card handy!

 If the Justice Department allows it, the advent of MSN will provide
 incredible competition to the old providers.  But, how will all this
 effect delivery of services?  First, the major services do not yet have
 wide availability of fast modem connections.  Second, the big services
 charge by the minute or by the message while most access providers charge
 by the month or even longer periods except for the most basic accounts.
 Even if you can get high speed access to one of the big boys you are not
 home free.  Compu$erve charges even higher rates for higher speed access.

 On the other hand, with the major service providers, the end user doesn't
 have to do much more to get their machine ready than to install the
 provider's access software and log on.  The options will all be on the
 provider's server.  With direct access it's usually up to the user to
 assemble a suite of software that will do everything the user desires.
 This method offers greater freedom but can be fraught with frustration.
 Loss of freedom is what is really threatened by the encroachment of the
 major providers and MSN.  The user is forced into their selection of
 internet clients, their interface and their options.  But there are two
 greater threats to the internet.

 The big threat everyone worries about is censorship.  With Congress
 pandering to the lowest common denominator and the squeaky wheel, there is
 real risk that in an attempt to prevent the one or two percent of the
 online world who are children from access to pornography, or to silence
 the distribution of unpopular and perhaps even hateful literature and
 ideas, it is possible that the net itself will be destroyed.  The entire
 concept of the net is open architecture and easy access to systems and
 servers.

 Every firewall, every barrier, every "protection" built into the system
 reduces its effectiveness as a medium of communication.  What a pleasant
 surprise to hear Newt Gingrich's comments on this issue.    (I feel
 better, now,  about that "newt" icon appearing on my screen every time I
 load Chameleon.)

 Here, my objections to the big providers may prove to be wrong headed,
 for if they can provide front end software which will permit the end
 user, read "parents", with the  ability to restrict access on the user
 end, we may have the best of both words.  Open systems with user control.
 Ahh fantasy land.

 But the real threat to the system isn't from the censors but from a new
 breed of on line entrepreneurs.  "After all what," they say,  "is the net
 for if not to make money?"  That last statement would have been anathema
 a few months ago.  Remember the outcry when a lawyer spread his
 advertising over the net.  That seems long ago indeed.

 Just a few months ago, virtually, no pun intended, every site on the
 World Wide Web could be  accessed.  Just click on a URL (Universal
 Resource Locator) and within a few seconds you were connected.  It was
 fascinating.  More amazing were the number of commercial publications
 which offered free and unfettered access.  Time Magazine, Ziffnet, the
 New York Times.

 But slowly that's changing.  It seems they were just getting us hooked.
 While few sites actually charge for access, there are a number of sites
 which require registration and passwords.  No longer can I merely click.
 Now, to read the NandO Times, an excellent source of national and
 international news, I have to get down my little card file and look up my
 user name and password.  At least I didn't have to provide a credit card
 number as I did for MSN, even though theres no charge yet.

 Commercial charges for online information are nothing new. Lexis and
 WestLaw have long charged outrageous sums for access to what is
 essentially public information.  But now there are commercial sites on
 the Web itself.  Paid subscriptions required. There is no free lunch, but
 for the moment there is a very inexpensive ride.  Who knows what it'll be
 like next year.

 A FINAL THOUGHT

 It's a gorgeous summer day.  Temperature in the 70's. Gentle breeze
 blowing.  It's time to let the modem cool off and get some fresh air.
 And I'm sitting at the keyboard writing this column.

 Actually it isn't that bad.  We just returned from a five day weekend in
 Michigan --  early breakfasts,  long hikes before lunch.  Long naps in
 the afternoon, with a good novel to fall asleep over.  And then a walk on
 the pier or a good dinner in the evening.   No keyboard, no modem.  Just
 good conversation and that novel by one of my favorite authors, Richard
 Powers, whose "Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance," blew me away a
 number of years ago.

 I should have been forewarned.  Even the dust jacket makes it clear that
 the new book, "Galatea 2.2"  ((Farrar Straus Giroux, NY) in-volves a
 confrontation with a computer. Its an attempt to enable a computer to
 compete with real students in a "Turing Test" and pass a masters degree
 exam in literature.  Real danger lurked when I read the words with which
 the book opened, "It was like so, but wasn't.  I lost my thirty-fifth
 year. . . ."

 Within a few pages we learn that the narrator had free access to what he
 calls the world web.  I've lost at least a year that way too. Just
 published, the book is set in that time, seemingly light years ago, but
 really not much more than a year, before the advent of the graphic
 browser, but still the author-narrator's excitement mounts as page after
 page he describes the addictive delights of  connecting to machines all
 over the face of the earth.  "The web: yet another total disorientation
 that became status quo without anyone realizing it."

 The novel is much more than technobabble, it is a fascinating tour of the
 subject of intelligence, literature and love.  Logoff, pick up a copy and
 a tall cool one.  Sit out on the deck and enjoy.

 Leonard Grossman is a lawyer with the Department of Labor and is a
 regular WindoWatch contributor. He can be reached at grossman@mcs.com or
 leonard.grossman@syslink.mcs.com








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                     Why Winzip?.... A Retrospective
                         Copyright 1995 by Bernie

 Good reader this piece is meant to be accompanied by a musical score
 beginning about mid-article, starting out at as a soft, almost
 imperceivable volume and ending fortissimo. I hear a patriotic piece...
 perhaps the Battle Hymn of the Republic... Go back and try it!  Now see
 what you've done... Ya got me started again. I'll have to cancel my
 patient load AGAIN for today.......

 DAMN IT!

 Thanks to all for the overwhelming number of replies regarding the
 musical question "Why should I use Winzip?"  I have been very
 surprised... veritably shocked at the lack of enthusiasm for this
 ubiquitous utility, which has been evident in the feedback to my query.

 I would not have guessed that there would be about a 6 to 1 ratio of
 comments against.  Either this unscientific survey means that Winzip is
 truly held in quite low regard, or that I have somehow struck a chord
 with the subversive element of this Windows NewsGroup, whose agenda would
 be to function as the nidus for a return to the days of real blood and
 guts computing... none of this cartoon stuff with little pictures serving
 as replacements for intellectual thought... yes, even for truth, justice
 and the American way.  Today heralds a throw-back to the days when
 cashiers gave change by counting rather than obeying the mindless orders
 of the change-calculating cash register. A return to the time of phonics
 and order in schools... to a time when you could leave your doors
 unlocked, when gasoline was 39 cents a gallon, when gay meant happy (no
 letters please... no slur intended), when funny little plastic glasses
 were given out in theater lobbies to view 3-D movies. In short, a return
 to the g ood old days.

 Little did I think when asking this question, that, one day in the
 future.... our children and our children's children will look upon this
 day, the day of the response to my question on Winzip, as the
 beginning... yea the genesis of a the new era, the turning point, the
 rebirth of the return to sense, to personal responsibility, to integrity,
 to everything that is good and wholesome and, yes... we were there... we
 were there together.

 Mine eyes fill with tears and my voice chokes with emotion as I dwell
 upon this, and I can only say, with the utmost of humility, that I could
 not have done all of this alone.  No one person could have achieved all
 of this alone. It was you... you renaissance people out there in
 cyber-land who, in joining with me in this revolution, deserve so much of
 the credit..... YOU are the ones who are never to be forgotten, of whom
 stories will be told and songs will be written.  YOU are the sentinels of
 the new time, the bravest of the brave, the wisest of the wise! God bless
 you folks. God bless you one and all.. real good!... and God bless DOS 6.

 Bernie...I have only one name like Cher, Fabian, Pauline. and Fabio
 bernie11@ix.netcom.com
 July 12, 1995 -how fitting.. between the 4th of July and Bastille Day!

 Bernie No-last-Name..You are the hero!  The best of the best! The finest
 and truest of us all.  You make me proud.....







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                           The WindoWatch
                         PLUG  OF  THE  MONTH


 Games and puzzles are one of the easiest ways to get the uninitiated
 computer user hooked!  Our Plug this month is a computerized version of
 one of the oldest games known to mankind.  It has many computerized
 versions most of which use the eccroutrements of the game and very little
 else.  This is the real thing and is as adictive and fun in front of the
 computer as it was at a gaming table.

 The version I looked at is shareware as is our policy for this column.
 The registered version has important features that make this game even
 more  challenging with the additional ability to save ones game.

 So let's cut to the bone and stow the palaver...

                              WindoWatch's


                        Plug of the Month is....




















                             MahJongg  for  Windows


 The price for the registered version of this software is US$29.95 or
 150 FrenchFrancs plus US$5 or 25 French Francs for posting and
 packaging .  I did NOT like the instructions for ordering the product so
 check with the authors at CompuServe .  Their address is:
 Name:Berrie Bloem
 CIS: 100545,2530


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                                  The Staff



 Editor                                          Lois B. Laulicht
 Contributing Editor:                                  Herb Chong
 Production Editor                                   Paul Kinnaly
 HomePage Editor                                        Jim Plumb
 Business Manager                                      Bob Miller

 Contributing Writers:
 John M. Campbell, Leonard Grossman,Jim Gunn, Gregg Hommel , Paul Kinnaly;
 Jerry Laulicht, Frank McGowan, Bob Miller, Peter Neuendorffer, Ben
 Schoor, Paul Williamson.


 EDITORIAL BOARD

 Herb Chong, Gregg Hommel, Lois Laulicht, Paul Williamson.

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 lois.laulicht@channel1.com
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 Editor WindoWatch
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 Submissions remain the intellectual property of the author. Manuscripts
 will NOT be returned if not used. Electronic File Access
 FTP>ftp.channel1.com/pub/WindoWatch FTP>
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 WindoWatch is found on Channel One in several formats by calling
 617-354-3137 (28800)  or
 617-354-3230 (9600 and 14.400).

 We publish in a Windows compatible format and  in HTML  on our home page.
The DOS format uses ReadRoom (*.TOC) One can also read online from the
Reader Room itself - Door 48. Non-members of Channel One can download the
latest WindoWatch issue by typing J Free from the main board prompt Annual
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locations. Postlink to Lois Laulicht ->15  tagging the message "receiver
only" and on the Internet lois.laulicht@channel1.com WindoWatch (c) 1995
all rights reserved, is the property of Lois B. Laulicht and CCC of WV
Valley Head, WV  26294


