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rec.sport.hockey ›
CANUCK NEWS: Who else? Pavel Bure.
1 post by 1 author

Alan Chim
11/5/91

        To no one's surprise Don Cherry does NOT like Pavel Bure.
However, he will like the fact that Bure will NOT be wearing a visor like
those Swedish players :)

~~~~

rec.collecting ›
Cards
1 post by 1 author

Alan Chim
11/5/91
I'm looking to buy the following boxes of cards.  All I'm looking for is
a general price idea as I'll be going to one card show in the States and
one in Canada on two different days, so I'd like to know what the price
ranges for the cards I desire will be.  They are as follows:
Star Trek Trading Cards (Impel)
Little Mermaid Trading Cards (Pro Set)
Topps Hockey 1991-92
OPC Hockey 1991-92
Score Hockey (All versions)
Any other hockey that has come out and is readily available at card
shows.

Thanks for your input on the pricing of the above items.

Alan Chim       Internet --> al...@arkham.wimsey.bc.ca (preferred)
                Alternate --> alan...@outbound.wimsey.bc.ca
                Net (FAQ) Contact for the Vancouver Canucks
"Pavel Bure, streaking down the right wing side, winds up, shoots, he scores!"\

~~~

XA 6: R ATKINS.CO1
MAUG CONFERENCE (Part 1)          Sept. 23, 1984
9:00 P.M. EDT

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

[ This longest-ever conference featured Bill "Iron Man"
Atkinson, and ran
over five hours including rain delays.  To put that in
perspective,
five hours is long enough for TWO Boston marathons, long
enough to
drive from New York to Washington and back with Clara
Peller, or long
enough to watch nearly half of the Super Bowl pre-game
show.  Over 120
MAUGers were present during the early part of the
meeting, but by the
end, at 2:30 A.M. Eastern time, fewer than 10 percent
remained.  The
rest succumbed to drowsiness, prior commitments and/or
the federal
bankruptcy laws.  --- Walt Marcinko 70320,244 ]

---<**********>---

(Neil Shapiro / Sysop) --  Order, please.  Our guest tonight
is Bill Atkinson,
author of the MacPaint program!

(Mike Cohen) --  Not to mention ** QuickDraw **.

Before we take questions from the audience, I have collected
just a few
questions that I am sure are on everyone's mind for Bill
to answer.  First,
Bill, is MacPaint going to be updated for the new 512K
Macs, and if so,
what will be some of the additional features?  Next, what
other programs
are you working on?  And do you feel that the graphics
potential of the  Mac has been reached yet?

(BILL ATKINSON) --  1) Version 1.4 of MacPaint is currently
being shipped.
All versions work fine on the 512K Mac, but version 1.4
uses the extra
memory to speed up scrolling quite a bit.  No new
features.  Version 1.4
also runs fine on the 128K Mac.  2) As for other programs,
I am working
on a dynamite new application for the Mac that I'm not at
liberty to
describe.  Hold your horses, Mac fans.  3) Mac's graphic
potential is
barely tapped.  In a few years the programs on Mac should
be a lot
smoother.

(Neil S. / Sysop) --  Okay, Larry Loeb is the first
questioner.  Go ahead,
Larry!

(Larry Loeb) --  Welcome to MAUGing, Bill.  As one of the
people I can
think of who has had some full experience with the 512K
Mac, how do you
feel it advances the "unfolding art" of the Mac? Is it
just for developers?

(BILL ATKINSON) --  Well, memory makes a lot of things
possible, but it
doesn't really change the Mac spirit.  It takes more
memory to make things
easier to use.  Wish we had the big chips to start with.
Wish they were
cheaper today.

(Gary Shell) --  Is there a way to get a catalog to work on
an alternate
disk with a single drive machine?

(BILL ATKINSON) --  Yes, open a document from that drive.
Print Catalog
uses the disk that the current document came from.

(Gary Shell) --  Bill, that bombs!

[ A few minutes later.]

(BILL ATKINSON) --  Just confirmed new bug in MacPaint.  It
does indeed bomb.
Thanks for new info, will look into it.

(David S. Rose) --  Bill, one question of concern to many of
us Maccers is
the question of compatibility between different types of
graphics programs.
For example, MacPaint seems to use a pixel type of
definition, while MacDraw
uses QuickDraw calls and Filevision seems to use a
combination.  Is there
any hope for a better integration or conversion between
types?

(BILL ATKINSON) --  The unstructured bitmap, as used in
MacPaint, is the
lowest common denominator.  All the other graphics can be
converted to it,
with the loss of their structure.  Bitmaps can represent
anything the
printer can print, including scanned images and freehand
painting.  You
can paste QuickDraw pictures into MacPaint, and for
full-page images I'm
sure someone will write a utility to convert a Draw Page
to a Paint  document.

(Paul Dobbs) --  Two short questions:  1) Is there any
possibility of our
seeing Rolodex as a desk accessory?  Sure would be nice!
2) Do you know
of any efforts to make a character-recognition program for
the Mac to go
with any of the video digitizers?

(BILL ATKINSON) --  1) Rolodex searches fast because the
data is all in RAM.
Desk accessories are limited to 8K bytes of heap use on
the 128K Mac.  Also,
Rolodex needs a home base for the RoloFile to live, which
doesn't work too
well if you're swapping disks.  2) I don't KNOW of anybody
doing character
recognition for the scanners, but it sounds like a great
idea, especially
for the Thunder scanner which can take in a whole page at
high resolution.

(Chris Goodman) --  Bill, is it possible to work with
QuickDraw commands to
create regions larger than the Mac screen but would fit on
one page of
paper?  If so, are the tricks available in "Inside
Macintosh"?

(BILL ATKINSON) --  Easy:  OpenRgn; MoveTo, LineTo...
CloseRgn.  Coordinates
can range up to 32K, independent of Mac screen size.
"Inside Macintosh"
contains complete documentation on QuickDraw.

(Chris & Pam Allen) --  Bill, I want to thank you not only
for MacPaint, but
for your contributions to public-domain software.  Two
questions:  Pam asks
if you consider yourself an artist, and I ask if you mind
the MacPaint
takeoffs, like mousepaint for the PC (even uses your
icons!).

(BILL ATKINSON) --  The whole point of MacPaint is to
unleash the artist in
all of us.  Yes, even I am an artist, though I'm not very
skilled at draw-
ing.  I would love it if the MacPaint clones were building
and improving
on MacPaint.  Most of them seem to mislead people into
thinking that Mac-
Paint runs on their IBM system, and people may be duped
into buying a PC
instead of a Mac.

(Lane Hauck) --  What's your affiliation with Koala
Technologies, and have
you seen any other good camera digitizers for the Mac?

(BILL ATKINSON) --  I am a good friend of George White,
chairman of Koala,
and I wrote a desk accessory for the Koala Camera which
lets you scan
images into MacPaint or other applications.  Koala has a
license with
Apple for the software.  No, I don't know of any other
good camera inter-
faces for the Mac.  Thunderscan is nice but takes 20
minutes per scan
instead of 5 seconds.

(Richard J. Boyhan) --  Bill, I have two personnel
questions.  1) Could we
have a little history on Bill Atkinson (birth, school,
work, etc.)?  Nothing
too long!  2) What hardware are you using now?

(BILL ATKINSON) --  Born 3/17/51 in Ottumwa, Iowa.  Jumped
from second-story
window at age one.  UCSD Undergraduate in ... Chemistry!!
University of
Washington graduate in ... Neuroscience and Electronics.
Joined Apple in
March, 1978, employee #51.  Will have first baby in 3
weeks, oh boy! (Girl.)
I am typing on a 128K Mac with MacTerm 1.1 and an Apple
1200 modem.  My
room has Lisas, Macs, Apple IIs, and prototypes.

(Neil S. / Sysop) --  Bet we would all like to hear about
those "prototypes".

(Arthur Greenwald) --  Bill, you're a true artist.  I use
MacPaint for TV
storyboards and to design menus for my wife's catering
business.  I love
MacPaint, but it's hard to keep a lot of small text lined
up.  (Grid incre-
ments are too large.)   1) Will future software enable
larger screen work
areas?  2) Can other printers like the HP LaserJet or
Canon Laser create
sharper camera-ready images?

(BILL ATKINSON) --  Far out!  Glad to see somebody using
MacPaint for real
thing!  1) No.  2) Looks great on prototype Apple laser
printer!

(James Doherty) --  MacPaint is great for making forms at
work.  My question
is:  Are there any plans that you know of for including
any of the new
graphics standards such as NAPLPS, and would QuickDraw
routines be of
help in this?

(BILL ATKINSON) --  I have heard of a few groups who are
bringing up NAPLPS
interpreters for Mac, built on top of QuickDraw.  Also ...
[ a line may
have been lost here] ... consider writing a word processor
in either
of these.

(Bill Davis) --  When you spoke about Desk Accessories, you
said that you
were limited to 8K.  Is that program and data, or just the
program?

(BILL ATKINSON) --  When you are a Desk Accessory, you are a
guest in some-
one else's house, so you should be as inconspicuous as
possible.  We have
settled on informal standards of 8K bytes of total heap
usage (code +
data) on a 128K Mac.

[ continued in "ATKINS.CO2" ]


XA 6: R ATKINS.CO2

MAUG CONFERENCE (Part 2)          Sept. 23, 1984
9:00 P.M. EDT

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

(Jerry G. Harris) --  Are there any QuickDraw routines
tailored for 3-D?

(BILL ATKINSON) --  There's a whole unit called Graf3D.  It
is available
from Tech Support and it layers 3-D transforms on top of
QuickDraw.

(Neil S. / Sysop) --  Can anyone get that or just
developers?

(BILL ATKINSON) --  All developers have it already
(including all consortium
universities).  Ask a friend for a copy.

(Hal Finney) --  MacPaint manages to update the screen
literally in the blink
of an eye (between one frame and the next), but for me
QuickDraw takes
several frames for some operations.  What's the magic
involved?

(BILL ATKINSON) --  Open the pod bay doors first, Hal...
Seriously, MacPaint
uses QuickDraw to draw into an off-screen bitmap, then
transfers the result
to the screen to avoid any flicker.

(Ronald Jones) --  1) Will the Finder or operating system
provide for tree-
structure directories in the near future?  2) Is Steve
Jobs as immature as
he appears in recent interviews?  3) Is the day of the
hacker gone, in
favor of the "serious developer"?

(BILL ATKINSON) --  1) Yes.  2) No.  3) Who knows?

(William J. Jones) --  Will dealers have the MacPaint 1.4
update?

(BILL ATKINSON) --  MacPaint 1.4 is the current production
version being
shipped with all Macs, including 512K machines, which take
advantage of 1.4.
There are  [ system dropped line(s) here ]

(Phil Porter) --  Will MacPaint eventually support light
pens or digitizer
tablets?

(BILL ATKINSON) --  Nothing in the works from Apple, but I
know of two tablet
makers who are writing mouse drivers for Mac, and their
tablets will be
usable with all Mac programs.

[ At this point, CIS appeared to have suffered a
significant system
failure, causing many MAUGers, including CO guest Atkinson
and beloved
Sysop Shapiro, to be dropped from the network.  The
conference resumed
after about 40 minutes of collective thumb-twiddling.]

(Neil S. / Sysop) --  Okay, order everyone.  Let's try to
get this thing
going again.

(BILL ATKINSON) --  I'm back!!!  Stupid computers, hate them
anyway.

(Neil S. / Sysop) --  The next person before the disaster
struck was to have
been Marion Stokes.  Marion, do you remember your
question?

(Marion Stokes) --  Welcome back, Bill.  Will the 512K Mac
accept the full
range of font numbers, up to 511 with positive ID's?

(BILL ATKINSON) --  I don't know.  We have made no changes
to the ROMs or
to Font Mover, just added more memory.  Sorry.

(Bill Steinberg / Alt.Sysop) --  The problem is with Font
Mover, not with
ROMs or System or fonts.  Use RMOVER in our XA4 database
for numbers
higher than 256.

(Marion Stokes) --  Get negatives when past 253.

(Dennis Brothers / Alt.Sysop) --  Bill A., it's sad but true
that the best
graphics on //s (and IBMs) are achieved by programs which
bypass the ROMs
and go to screen memory directly.  Do you think the same
will be true of
the Mac, or will QuickDraw be good enough for the Bill
Budges of the world?

(BILL ATKINSON) --  I believe 95% of Mac programs will find
QuickDraw suffi-
cient.  For those with special requirements, where
specialized code is
worth it, the Mac has a very clean screen mapping that
makes things simple.
Also, if you insist on hitting the screen directly, use
address $7A700,
which will work for both the 512K and 128K Macs because of
wrap-around
addressing.

(Kerry Lynn) --  1) Does QuickDraw represent region
boundaries using run-
length encoding?  2) Will Apple be licensing QuickDraw
technology?  Is
there a contact?

(BILL ATKINSON) --  Mac is an "open system", including a
disassembler.  I
worked for quite a long time developing QuickDraw for
Apple, and I hope
people will respect the investment Apple has put into Mac.
Please don't
rip me off.  But if you must, the best place to look is at
ROM address
... disconnect security violation.

--  I think Kerry hit my question.  Will you be able to
produce
pseudocode logic for some of your QuickDraw routines in
future Comp
Graphics text?  Also, how is Alan Kay doing?

(BILL ATKINSON) --  Unfortunately, the algorithms invented
for Apple in
QuickDraw are still important for the success of
Macintosh.  I would like
to tell all, but don't want to hurt Mac. Alan Kay is doing
"INSANELY GREAT".

(Ray Fleischmann) --  Since Mac is still so new, there
haven't been many
conflicts with fonts/icons and their assigned Resource ID
numbers.  But
as time goes on there will be more and more fonts/icons by
people other
than Apple.  What, if anything, is Apple going to do to
keep everyone
from walking all over each other's fonts/icons.  Will
Apple keep MAUG
and current users posted?

(BILL ATKINSON) --  Fonts and icons are a bit different.
Icons have a local
ID number which does not conflict with the global ID
assigned by the Finder
when installing into the desktop, so you don't have to
worry there.  (Saved
by the bundle.)  Fonts do have to be unique.  Cary Clark
is helping assign
the limited 256 font IDs and we are working out a way to
allow 65,536
different fonts.  Still, you would want to get a block of
numbers from
Tech Support.

(Neil S. / Sysop) --  Well, it is getting on past midnight
on the East Coast.
Before getting the last group of questions, I'd just like
to thank Bill
very much for having been here, and Bill, I hope that you
will be able to
make other COs in the future.

(BILL ATKINSON) --  Why do we have to stop at midnight?

(Bill S. / Alt.Sysop) --  (Neil maybe has to stop at
midnight.)

(Neil S. / Sysop) --  We don't if you're game!

(BILL ATKINSON) --  I'm game all night.

(Steve Meuse) --  Bill, I read that the QuickDraw routines
support color.
Will a hypothetical color Macintosh using these routines
have less hori-
zontal resolution than the black-and-white display (a la
Apple ///)?
Also, who are writing mouse drivers for graphics tablets,
if you can say?
Finally, were you really online for the practice CO as
"Elmer Pix"?

(BILL ATKINSON) --  1) Depends on which hypothetical color
Mac you had in
mind to invent.  2) Summagraphics, and another that I
forget.  3) Sho'nuff.

(Neil S. / Sysop) --  Okay.  Well, Dennis Brothers, who is a
programmer and
hence never sleeps, tells me that he can take over the CO
to allow me to
get enough sleep that I can catch my 7 A.M. train
tomorrow!

(Bill S. / Alt.Sysop) --  (I told you Neil wasn't allowed up
past 12.)

(Nel S. / Alt.Sysop) --  So, I am just going to personally
thank Bill
Atkinson for being here and all of you for making the MAUG
CO the most
popular conference line on the network!  Dennis, carry
that torch!

(Dennis Brothers / Alt.Sysop) --  Okay.  <stage fright>
Take it, Doug Olson.

(Douglas K. Olson) --  Bill, I am using MacForth to write an
application
for the Mac.  I have "Inside Macintosh" but find it hard
to understand
calls without being able to experiment.  (No Lisa/Pascal.)
Thus, how does
one update a window bitmap after a window has been
reactivated (i.e.,
holes left in window from overlaps)?  Also, how does one
update window
areas after a scrollbits?

(BILL ATKINSON) --  Sorry, but I haven't used MacForth yet,
so I can't help
you there.  In general, updates are handled by calling
BeginUpdate, then
drawing entire contents (will be clipped automatically),
then EndUpdate.
After a ScrollRect call, you should SetClip to the
UpdateRgn returned by
ScrollRect, then draw window contents as usual.  Hope I
have been of some
help.  Perhaps you could send a message on MAUG asking for
MacForth
programmers to help you out.

(Don Krapf) --  A few days ago on the message board you
mentioned that the
512K upgrade has a few new runs and a new pad for a PAL.
Is any of this
for anything other than addressing the new memory?

(BILL ATKINSON) --  No.  The board rev is just for the new
memory.
(Bill Steinberg / Alt.Sysop) --  How would one go about
getting a formal
description of the structure of the directory and of the
desktop file
maintained by the Finder?

(BILL ATKINSON) --  The directory structure is spelled out
in the File
Manager document in "Inside Macintosh".  I don't know
where to get the
Finder stuff.  (Try Cary Clark?)

(Dick Weismann) --  Could you briefly explain how a MacPaint
file can be
"translated" for output to a digital phototypesetter?

(BILL ATKINSON) --  First, read the MacPaint document format
described in
an appendix to "Inside Mac".  Basically you skip the
512-byte header,
then the rest is 720 scanlines, each 576 bits wide, but
packed with
PackBits.  Use UnpackBits to unpack each scanline, then do
whatever you
want to the bits.  George Litho and Compugraphic offer a
service if
you don't want to write your own.  Have fun!

[ continued in "ATKINS.CO3" ]

XA 6: R ATKINS.CO3

MAUG CONFERENCE (Part 3)          Sept. 23, 1984
9:00 P.M. EDT

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

(Walt Marcinko) --  Bill, here's a question we've
traditionally asked of
CO guests since the late '50s.  What is your favorite
color?

(BILL ATKINSON) --  Green.

(Dennis B. / Alt.Sysop) --  Leave it to Walt to ask the hard
questions!

(Walt Marcinko) --  "It's a dirty job, but..."

(BILL ATKINSON) --  I was just informed by Apple's corporate
counsel that
I am not authorized to discuss matters relating to color.

(Walt Marcinko) --  (The goons strike again.)

(Jerry G. Harris) --  Bill, what role does the 68020
microprocessor play
in the future Mac?

(BILL ATKINSON) --  The 68020 screams like a bat out of
hell, and all Mac
code runs on it without change.  Apple would be stupid not
to build the
68020 into some future machine.  The only question is when.

(Ken Elinger) --  Which language do you like to program in?
68000, C, Pascal?

(BILL ATKINSON) --  All of the above.  Usually I start in
Pascal and rewrite
the critical parts in 68K.  I'm fairly new to C, but it
seems to get the
job done with the minimum of wrist-slaps.

(Dennis B. / Alt.Sysop) --  Is there a profiler for Lisa
Pascal that runs
on the Mac?

(BILL ATKINSON) --  I'm not sure.  It would be pretty easy
to write one,
using the extra memory of a 512K Mac to hold the data.

(R Jones) --  Doesn't Motorola put out a 12Mhz 68K, and if
so, why didn't
Apple use it?

(BILL ATKINSON) --  Not in Mac [sales] volumes!

(Douglas K. Olson) --  Bill, I have three questions.  Answer
if able.
1) Can we expect Lisa-type concurrency on the Mac?  Via a
desk accessory
maybe?  2) As far as RAM is concerned, what's beyond 512K?
I've heard
a wish/rumor that Apple might be putting a 3.5" 20-Meg
hard drive INSIDE
a future Mac.  True?  3) Where would you personally like
to see the Mac
of the future go?

(BILL ATKINSON) --  1) I'm not sure what you mean on the
concurrency.  Mac
already lets the Calculator, Notepad, etc. run
concurrently.  The 512K
Mac may allow larger desk accessories that come closer to
being full
applications.  2) I think we'll stick with 512K for a
while.  It really
helps developers to settle on a common configuration, and
512K is pretty
nice.  3) I personally want to see Mac getting into homes.
Individual
people using computers to enhance their personal
creativity and
satisfaction.

(Walt Marcinko) --  Bill, to follow up on an earlier line of
questioning,
what is your favorite Mac font?

(BILL ATKINSON) --  I personally designed the cursive font
we call Venice,
but my own favorite font is Athens because it is so strong
and crisp.
I also like the Paris font that Cliff Joyce designed for
Mac the Knife.

(Marion Stokes) --  First, thanks a million for the game of
Life.  Is there
any animation package from Apple or anyone besides the Ann
Arbor group?

(BILL ATKINSON) --  MacroMind is working on a neat animation
package that
lets you edit music and bitmaps both.  I don't know when
they will ship,
but they have some great people and what I've seen so far
looks great.

(Bill S. / Alt.Sysop) --  I have a LOT of fonts and I like
to have them
available to MacPaint.  I can either put them all into the
System file
(making a System file of over 200K), or I can put them
into MacPaint's
resource fork, making for a huge MacPaint and a small
System.  My Mac-
Paint disk has ONLY MacPaint on it, so I don't care if the
fonts are
"unavailable" to other applications (in this case).  Is
there an advantage
to storing the fonts in one place rather than the other
(speed, etc.)?

(BILL ATKINSON) --  I think you understand the options about
as well as I do.
Try it each way and let me know which works better for
you.  I'm sure it's
affected by whether you have an external drive.  Good
luck!

(Dennis B. / Alt.Sysop) --  That brings up one of the
commoner questions we
get on MAUG.  People are always running out of space for
MacPaint work
files on the MacPaint system disk.  Is there any way to
force the work
files to a data disk in the external drive?

(BILL ATKINSON) --  No.  Paint1 and Paint2 work files
are opened on volume 0.
Have heart, if you get so rich and lucky as to have a 512K
Mac, Paint1 and
Paint2 disappear and the entire document stays in memory.
This makes
scrolling mucho faster!  Note that version 1.4, the
current release, has
this enhancement.

(Jerry Tompkins) --  Have you heard anything recently about
progress of
the Lotus project?  What is it going to look like?  Any
ideas?

(BILL ATKINSON) --  I saw it a long time ago and it looked
pretty nice then.
I don't think I'm supposed to give details about it, since
they showed it
in confidence.  "Soon".

(Ken Addison) --  I was/am one of the "few" people working
with the now
unsupported Clascal/Toolkit for Lisa.  I really like
object programming.
Is there any chance of an object-oriented programming
language on the Mac?

(BILL ATKINSON) --  I don't know if Apple has plans to bring
the Toolkit
over to Mac, since most developers are asking for C right
now.  Somebody
will undoubtedly bring up various object-oriented
languages on the Mac.
Ask in the message section.

(Dennis B. / Alt.Sysop) --  What's the current and future
status of Apple
support for independent development on the Lisa?

(BILL ATKINSON) --  You're getting in over my head.  I know
mostly about
MacPaint, QuickDraw and writing code.  Dan Cochran knows
better what
Apple is up to along those lines.  Most developers seem to
be a lot more
interested in Mac because of the number of machines out
there.  Lisa seems
to be getting a surge of interest coming mainly from Mac.

(Dennis B. / Alt.Sysop) --  Just thought I'd try.  We've
already beaten Dan
over the head with that one.  Okay, one more probing
question from Walt
Marcinko.

(Walt Marcinko) --  Bill, do you feel that jumping out that
second-story
window played any part in your success as a programmer?

(BILL ATKINSON) --  No, I'm told that I landed on my butt.