TidBITS#669/03-Mar-03
=====================
With a no-show projector, one of Adam's recent user group
presentations almost suffered a Keynote-free passing. Fortunately,
it's not that easy to thwart a geek: read on for Adam's camera-
inspired save! Also in this issue, Kirk McElhearn flexes his
organizational and creative muscles with Inspiration 7. In the
news, we note the releases of Bare Bones Software's TextWrangler
1.0, REALbasic 5.0, and the important AirPort Extreme 5.0.3
firmware update.
Topics:
MailBITS/03-Mar-03
The PowerShot Presentation
Getting Inspired by Inspiration 7
<http://www.tidbits.com/tb-issues/TidBITS-669.html>
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MailBITS/03-Mar-03
------------------
**Bare Bones Rustles Up TextWrangler 1.0** -- Bare Bones Software
has released Text Wrangler 1.0, a $50 general-purpose text editor
without the extensive feature set (particularly the HTML features)
or $180 price of its highly regarded sibling BBEdit. TextWrangler
can open and edit nearly any text file, including those with
Unicode (UTF-8 and UTF-16) character sets, and features speedy
search and replace (including PCRE matching - PCRE stands for
Perl-Compatible Regular Expression), syntax coloring, FTP file
access, and more. With the release of TextWrangler, Bare Bones
has discontinued the free BBEdit Lite; owners of BBEdit Lite can
upgrade to the full version of BBEdit for $120 until 31-Mar-03.
To help users differentiate between its editors, Bare Bones has
posted feature comparisons of TextWrangler versus BBEdit 7.0 and
TextWrangler versus BBEdit Lite 6.1. TextWrangler 1.0 is available
in a 30-day full-featured demo version, which is a 9.8 MB
download. [JLC]
<http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/>
<http://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/>
<http://www.barebones.com/products/bblite/>
<http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/versus.shtml>
<http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/vs_Lite.shtml>
**AirPort Extreme 5.0.3 Firmware Update** -- Apple has released a
1 MB firmware update for the new AirPort Extreme Base Station,
fixing a number of problems. Updated AirPort Extreme Base Stations
should no longer spontaneously restart, there is now no known
limit to the number of FTP connections that can be initiated
through the base station, and most important, the AirPort Extreme
Base Station should recover more gracefully when exposed to
excessive 2.4 GHz radio interference (such as might come from
a 2.4 GHz cordless phone, a microwave oven, or a Bluetooth
device). Previously, the AirPort Extreme network could become
unavailable and fail to recover when exposed to excessive
interference. My co-author on The Wireless Networking Starter Kit,
Glenn Fleishman, found that the firmware update also reduced the
severity of the problems he'd found in his testing of review units
from Apple.
<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=120191>
This update coincides with a firmware update from Apple's wireless
chip partner, Broadcom. Since manufacturers such as Linksys use
the Broadcom chips, look for firmware updates for other 802.11g
gear as well. The important aspect of the Broadcom update is that
it now has 802.11b Wi-Fi certification, meaning that all Broadcom-
based devices darn well better work with all Wi-Fi-certified
802.11b devices. For more coverage of AirPort and AirPort Extreme
issues, visit the weblog that Glenn maintains in conjunction with
our book. You can also now download a PDF-based update about
AirPort Extreme and 802.11g that rolls in even more changes since
we published "AirPort Extreme: In the Key of G" in TidBITS-663_).
[ACE]
<http://wireless-starter-kit.com/airportblog/>
<http://wireless-starter-kit.com/pdfs/80211g_emergence.pdf>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=07047>
**REALbasic Turns 5.0** -- REAL Software has released version 5.0
of REALbasic, its flagship programming environment for making
Classic, Mac OS X, and Windows applications. This promises to be
an significant revision - more so, perhaps, than any since version
2 (see "REALbasic Gets Real" in TidBITS-493_). The compiler has
been rewritten from the ground up, enabling some much-needed
rationalization of the language itself, along with improvements
such as far more convenient, natural syntax, and some elegant
new object-oriented constructs (such as operator overloading
and custom coercion functions). Sockets, too, have been completely
rewritten, including a long-desired ServerSocket class that
implements listeners through a pool-and-dispatcher architecture.
Other major improvements include support for brushed-metal
windows, drawers, toolbars, and dynamic menus. REALbasic runs
natively on Mac OS 8.1 or later and Mac OS X; a version that
runs natively on Windows is currently in development. REALbasic
costs $100, or $300 for the Pro version, which includes
ServerSockets, database access, and compilation for Windows;
upgrades from pre-4.5 versions are half those prices. [MAN]
<http://www.realsoftware.com/realbasic/>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=05508>
The PowerShot Presentation
--------------------------
by Adam C. Engst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
A couple of weeks ago I gave a presentation to the Metropolitan
New York Macintosh Alliance (MetroMac) and the Long Island
Macintosh Users Group (LIMac). Both went well, the audiences
asked great questions, and it was an all around good time. I was
particularly amused by the MetroMac method of attracting new
supporting members: Anyone could enter the raffle for software,
clothing, or some of my books, but you did so knowing that if you
won something and weren't already a supporting member, you'd have
to join on the spot.
<http://www.metromac.org/>
<http://www.limac.org/>
But that's not what I want to tell you about today. Instead, I
want to pass on a clever method of giving a presentation in a room
full of people without a projector, unexpectedly borne from
necessity. As soon as I arrived at the MetroMac meeting, the
president, Chris Bastian, told me that he'd been unable to secure
a projector for the evening, since someone else in his office had
needed it at the last minute for a presentation in Albany. (Chris
relayed this news with the slight concern of the native New Yorker
that Albany was very far away and probably had horse-powered
electrical generators.) There was a TV in the room, but I had no
cables to connect it to my iBook. Luckily, the room wasn't all
that large, and my slides weren't absolutely essential for the
audience, so I resigned myself to not being able to show off the
cool things I'd been able to do in Keynote.
A few minutes later though, a guy who worked at NBC came in, and,
upon learning we had no projector, announced that if only we'd
told him, he could have brought the right cables to connect to the
TV. Slightly irked at the implication that any properly prepared
geek would have had these cables, I started thinking if there was
any way I could use the TV to give my presentation. A few seconds
later, I had an idea, but it was such a long shot that I didn't
say anything and instead worked secretly through most of the Q&A
section of the meeting. Here's what I did.
**Hacking a Presentation** -- The tools at my disposal were my
iBook, my presentation in Keynote and QuickTime formats,
Ambrosia's Snapz Pro X screen capture software, my Canon PowerShot
S100 digital camera, an Addonics Pocket DigiDrive USB card reader,
and a cable for connecting the camera to the RCA video input jack
on a TV. I don't normally carry these last two with me to
presentations, but since I was also visiting relatives and
planning to take pictures, I'd thrown them in the bag before
leaving home.
<http://www.apple.com/keynote/>
<http://www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/snapzprox/>
<http://www.powershot.com/powershot2/s100/>
<http://www.addonics.com/products/flash_memory_reader/pocket_digidrive.asp>
I knew that I could connect the camera to the TV, and I also
knew that I could copy files from the iBook back to the camera's
CompactFlash card using the USB card reader (something that's not
possible with the normal USB cable that connects the camera to the
Mac). I knew I could make JPEG screen shots of each of my slides
with Snapz Pro X; the main question was if I could trick the
camera into displaying them.
I first tried to start my Keynote presentation and take a screen
shot of the entire screen with Snapz Pro X. Bad idea - as soon as
I invoked Snapz Pro X, Mac OS X stopped responding to the keyboard
and trackpad. Time for a hard restart. For my next attempt, I used
the QuickTime movie that I had earlier exported out of Keynote as
a backup, and Snapz Pro had no trouble taking screen shots of the
QuickTime Player window.
Rather than blithely copy the images to my Compact Flash card,
since I knew the camera would ignore files that weren't in the
right place or named correctly, I gave my screen shots sequential
names using the same format that the camera assigned to its
photos. Then I copied the screen shots to the folder on the
CompactFlash card that contained the most recent photos. Swapping
the card back into the camera, I turned it on and was rewarded
by the sight of my screenshots! Zooming out to see nine thumbnails
at a time didn't work, as it does with normal photos, but that
wasn't important. A few seconds of cable plugging later, and
my presentation was showing - in pretty decent quality - on
the TV set. Frankly, I was amazed it worked.
The only slight problem was that the camera kept shutting itself
off to conserve battery power (I had another battery and a charger
with me as well, just in case). I should have turned that setting
off, but in the heat of the moment, I didn't think of it, and
instead just pushed a button every so often to keep it awake.
If you think you might need to employ this trick at some point, I
recommend testing with your camera first, since cameras from other
manufacturers may not be so easily fooled. Also make sure you have
the appropriate software and hardware as part of your standard
travel kit. And although the presentation isn't as impressive as
it would be from Keynote via a projector, your audience will be
so impressed with your raging geekhood that they won't care.
**Keynote Comments** -- Although I'm not up for (or probably
qualified to do) a full review, I used Keynote for the first
time to create this presentation, and overall, I was impressed.
I don't create that many presentations, but I've always found
myself butting heads with PowerPoint in the past. Keynote proved
much more fluid and easy to use, and its automatic guides are
absolutely brilliant. When you're positioning an object, Keynote
automatically provides a guide set to the center (or the edges)
of nearby objects. Occasionally I needed to remind it which other
object was important by selecting it, and then going back to
the text or graphic I was placing. Keynote's slide-to-slide
transitions are gorgeous, and although I had to refer to the
slim manual to figure them out, it can also do slick "builds"
of objects appearing on and disappearing from a given slide.
I did run into three problems with Keynote. First, since my
presentation covered products introduced at Macworld Expo, I used
Apple's PR photographs of their new products, since they were much
better quality than the images I could pull from the product Web
pages. Unfortunately, the PR photographs were huge - 7 or 8 MB
each in some cases - and when I copied those into my Keynote
presentation, Keynote happily stored the full size image in the
bundle it creates for your presentation (Control-click it and
choose Show Package Contents to see what's inside). By the end,
my presentation was 76 MB. Of course, I could have reduced the
size of the images manually, but it would have been nice if
Keynote had offered an option to do so for me.
Second, Keynote lacks a text feature I particularly like in
PowerPoint. When you're adding bullet points to a text block in
PowerPoint, it automatically reduces the font size of the entire
text block if that's the only way to make the text fit. Keynote
doesn't do that, instead forcing you to fiddle with font sizes
manually in those cases where you need just a little more room.
I'd encourage Apple to think about the best way Keynote could
help the user deal with this extremely common situation.
Third, although its performance was completely fine on my dual
1 GHz Power Mac G4, on my iBook, with its 500 MHz PowerPC G3
processor, Keynote occasionally stuttered and moved slowly when
drawing a slide. It's not too surprising, particularly given the
size of some of my images, but I'd encourage you to test on the
Mac you plan to use for a presentation to avoid unpleasant
surprises.
On the whole though, the pair of presentations went extremely
well, thanks to Keynote, to the trick I came up with for moving
the presentation to my camera, and to both user groups.
PayBITS: Did Adam's article give you some new ways
to share your presentations? Say thanks via PayBITS!
<https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=ace%40tidbits.com>
<http://www.amazon.com/paypage/P1N8NDO1283399>
Read more about PayBITS: <http://www.tidbits.com/paybits/>
Getting Inspired by Inspiration 7
---------------------------------
by Kirk McElhearn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Looking back through the TidBITS archives, it's interesting to
how many appearances Inspiration has made. The first review, by
Adam Engst in 1992, looked mostly at the outline functions. Adam
recommended the program, though with reservations.
<http://www.inspiration.com/>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=03113>
Matt Neuburg then picked up the ball, writing about version 4 in
1993. He, too, looked mostly at the outline function, but I was
intrigued to see how differently he and Adam approached and used
this program.
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=02542>
In 1997, Matt was back, calling Inspiration a "surprising
survivor," and his conclusion was far more positive than his
previous review. (This second review contains an excellent,
concise description of the basic principle behind Inspiration -
I won't reiterate those points here, and I recommend you read
Matt's 1997 review for an overview on the subtleties of outlines
and diagrams in Inspiration.)
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=04586>
Matt wrote another brief review of the program in 2000, focusing
on Inspiration's (then) new approach to developing the program
for the children's market.
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06025>
So, why am I taking over now with this look at Inspiration 7?
After discussing with Matt the different ways we approach the same
program, he was delighted to see new eyes examine it. Unlike many
programs that offer one or two basic tasks, Inspiration is open to
the extent that users can make what they want of it.
**An Essential Tool for Organizing Thoughts** -- Whether using it
to create outlines, mind maps, flow charts, or to compose and
write, Inspiration features a radically unusual approach to
organizing thoughts and information. Since we tend to think in
a non-linear manner, the imposition of a linear structure on our
ideas can fetter us and keep us from exploring relationships that
may lead in unexpected directions. To use writing as an example,
the most common way to approach a text is to start at the
beginning, work through to the middle, then continue to the end.
This works for some people, but it is like a one-way expressway:
there's no turning around, and no way to examine the streets that
branch off in other directions.
Using a tool like Inspiration, one can adopt a different approach.
Instead of focusing on the straight line that leads from the
beginning to the end of a text, an author can toss out ideas, in
any order, then group and regroup them, examining the synergies
they create in certain relationships, and see how various ideas
can flow into others. No longer is an author limited to a purely
cause and effect relationship - ideas become multi-dimensional,
and can be repositioned easily.
It should be said that you can do this type of organization
without Inspiration - a nice pack of file cards and a sharp pencil
offer the same possibilities. You can just jot ideas down on the
file cards, toss them on the floor, and start rearranging them.
But those of us who are used to working on computers find it much
more practical to use a program to organize thoughts, especially
since you can add text to any idea, and, when moving an idea, move
the text with it.
**How Inspiration Works** -- The main difference between
Inspiration and other outlining software is the program's diagram
view, where an outline can be visualized as a mind map. Mind
maps come from the ideas of Tony Buzan, who has written several
books on creativity. They present thoughts, ideas, or data in a
graphical fashion, with each thought or concept in a symbol (which
can be any of a number of shapes) and arrows linking the ideas to
show their interrelationships. These ideas can be arranged in many
ways: as cause and effect, like a flow chart, in a tree structure,
or with a central "main idea" with other ideas sprouting all
around it.
<http://www.mind-map.com/>
The beauty of Inspiration is its ability to use mind maps, and
switch from diagram view to a standard, linear text outline. With
a simple click on the toolbar (or keyboard shortcut), you can
toggle from one to the other. After creating visual relationships,
and switching to outline view, you can then convert your amorphous
mind map into a linear outline - after all, no matter how you
compose a text, it will be read in a linear fashion (unless, of
course, you are writing a hypertext).
**How I Wrote this Review** -- Perhaps the best way to explain how
Inspiration works is to tell you how I wrote this review. I began
using Inspiration in outline view, where I jotted down some basic
ideas. Running version 7 of the program for the first time, I made
notes about the most visible changes from the previous version in
the interface and menus. After writing about 10 topics, I switched
to diagram view, and examined how my thoughts fit together.
At this point, I hadn't yet developed an overall structure for
the article - merely some points that seemed essential. In diagram
view, I began adding the key elements of the article's structure:
I wanted to talk about how the program works in outline and
diagram view, I wanted to explain how one can rearrange ideas
in both views, I wanted to mention the changes (for the better,
and for the worse) in the interface, I planned to mention the
keyboard shortcuts the program uses, and I wanted to talk about
what is missing.
Inspiration would not be very useful if it only let you organize
topics and concepts. Although it is not a word processor, it lets
you write several pages of text in notes windows, which look a
bit like Stickies windows. (These windows are visible in diagram
view.) Notes are connected to topics - if you are in diagram view,
you select a symbol and click the Note button in the toolbar to
display a note window. If you are in outline view, you just press
Return at the end of a topic and start typing.
So, I began filling out my article by adding notes to different
sections. This allowed me to switch from one section to another
as thoughts came to mind, and it let me work in a non-linear
manner. As I went on, I thought of other things that needed to
be mentioned, such as the program's templates and symbols. So I
added new symbols to my diagram for these two ideas, and went
back to writing.
I occasionally switched back to outline view to reorder my ideas -
when you create new ideas in diagram view, they may or may not
be in the order you want, depending on the type of diagram you
create. I tend to create amorphous diagrams, with the main idea
in the center and other ideas sprouting around it. I try to put
them in some kind of logical order, usually starting at the
12 o'clock position and moving clockwise. But I often end up
rearranging them in outline view. When doing this, if I merely
change the order of my first level topics, the diagram does not
change. But if I move sub-topics from one first level topic to
another, the diagram hierarchy adjusts appropriately. This can
take some getting used to, and, after making such changes, you
may need to rearrange your diagram. This may seem to be a lot
of work, but I have actually found that all this rearranging
gives me a better grasp of the interrelationships between
different sections of a document, and a better global view
of it. Instead of looking at text as linear, I see it as a
collection of ideas and work with that in mind.
**New Features** -- This version of Inspiration has plenty of
new features, fully justifying its 7.0 version number. Probably
the most important is Mac OS X compatibility, though as a Carbon
application it's also usable under previous versions of the
Mac OS, as far back as System 7.1.
Many other functions are added or enhanced. I mentioned above
how you can write notes while in diagram view, a much-improved
variation of the previous version's difficult notes feature. You
can now truly write in diagram view, though I still prefer writing
in outline view.
Hyperlinks are a useful addition. Just paste a URL into your
diagram or outline and it automatically appears blue and
underlined; clicking URLs opens them in your default Web browser.
If no item is selected in the diagram, you can paste a URL to
create a new topic with this link.
Helpfully, you're not limited to Web addresses. Control-clicking
a hyperlink displays a contextual menu containing an Edit
Hyperlink command; from here you can edit the hyperlink's visible
text and link the URL to a Web page, an email address, a file,
or a new blank Inspiration document. Linking to a file can be
especially useful if you use Inspiration to organize a complex
project, enabling you to reference supporting documents (such
as Excel spreadsheets, for example) that open in their proper
applications. (Note that you can turn off URL auto-detection
and live links if you don't want URLs to be clickable.)
"Child" outlines, a complicated feature involving multiple windows
belonging to the same topic or idea, have been replaced by actual
"hypertext" documents. If you have Inspiration documents from
versions 5 or 6, and open them in version 7, it creates a
Hyperlinked Files folder that contains individual documents
for each child outline.
**Interface Changes** -- Inspiration 7 sports a new interface that
contains its share of improvements, but also some disappointments.
Its toolbars and buttons look a bit too much like the Windows XP
interface, though the addition of a simple formatting toolbar at
the bottom of its windows is welcome. In diagram view, the display
makes it easier to know which outline topics have subtopics or
notes, and you can easily hide subtopics in diagram view.
Outline view has undergone major changes. Some are for the better,
such as the bar at the left of the outline window, which more
clearly delimits topics, subtopics and notes. Other changes are
for the worse. For example, the selection control column shows
which topic or subtopic is selected by highlighting a large space
on the document with your default selection color. That's fine for
small sections, such as single topics, but when typing long texts
as notes, I find it very distracting.
A few omissions were noticeable. I find the lack of drag & drop
text editing a bit of a hindrance, and an in-line spell checker
would be nice (especially since, under Mac OS X, this capability
is built into the operating system). Also, some of the keyboard
shortcuts make little sense - I have become used to using
Command-H to hide applications in Mac OS X; Inspiration uses
that shortcut to hide a subtopic, and I "lost" many subtopics
before I realized what was happening. In my opinion, this kind
of system-wide shortcut should never be used for other purposes;
it's a bit like finding a program that uses Command-C to
close windows.
Another un-Mac-like use of keyboard shortcuts is the illogical
way function keys are used for certain shortcuts. Sure, this
is the way it is in the Windows world, but we Mac users rarely
use function keys for that purpose. The program also uses
unusual shortcuts made up of the Command key and numbers, such
as Command-9 for Scroll to Selection, along with other confusing
key combinations. For example, Show/Hide Notes is Command-Y,
which is sometimes used for the Redo function in Mac programs.
View/Hide Toolbar is Command-F8, whereas the Finder uses Command-B
for its toolbar, so something similar would make more sense. Many
keyboard shortcuts clearly come from Windows and ignore Macintosh
conventions.
Another bow toward Windows is the way settings and preferences
are handled. Choose Preferences from the Inspiration 7 menu, and
you get a dialog called Application Settings. Choose Application
Settings from the Utility menu, and you see the same dialog. This
is confusing, though not as confusing as the Default Settings menu
item in the Utility menu, which opens a wizard that guides you
through settings for the default template. Not only is this long
and complex (in the previous version it was a breeze), but when
you are finished it displays a dialog each time, telling you that
you have changed the default settings, then opens a new file,
which you may not want. The same goes for creating a new template:
You go through the same wizard, save your template, and get a
similar dialog. It seems that these two processes could be
combined, as they were in the previous version.
Particularly helpful are Inspiration's templates, files containing
preset diagrams and outlines, laid out with blank symbols or
topics, which you can use for either educational or professional
purposes. Divided into five groups - Language Arts, Social
Studies, Science, Planning, and Thinking Skills - these templates
give you an excellent idea of how you can work with Inspiration.
A 60-page manual presents each of the templates visually, explains
how to use them, and discusses the benefits of each specific
template. The program also comes with a wealth of symbols to
use in diagrams. Although I don't especially care for the hundreds
of symbols the program includes - I just use rectangles and ovals -
others may find that these graphics help identify their ideas more
precisely, or communicate them more efficiently to others.
**Where's the Doc?** As a writer of computer books and manuals,
I am especially sensitive to documentation, and, for a program
as different and complex as Inspiration, good documentation is
important. Although many users can "pick up" programs just by
using them, the concepts behind Inspiration are new to most people
and documentation is a must. Inspiration ships with two booklets -
a Getting Started guide and the Template Guide - and four PDF
files with documentation: the two aforementioned guides, a User's
Manual, and a Symbol Guide, which shows all the many symbols that
can be used when in diagram view.
I have mixed feeling about the documentation - while the Symbol
Guide and Template Guide are practical, the User's Manual is dense
and not very inviting: entire chapters go by with no screen shots
or illustrations, making it a relatively unattractive manual.
**Conclusion** -- One of the biggest problems with a program like
Inspiration is fitting it into your way of working. For me,
outlines are like fences that let me rein in my often unorganized
thoughts. Being able to work both visually, in diagram view,
and in a standard text format gives me different perspectives
on my ideas. The possibilities inherent in such a program are
tremendous - the ability to link both Web pages and documents
in an outline can save a lot of time organizing external
information.
The real question is whether users can adapt to this concept -
for many people, Inspiration represents not only a new way of
creating documents on their computer, but a new way of thinking
as well. In my case, I have long been sold on this way of working.
Inspiration is, for me, one of the few essential writing tools
on my Macintosh, and, with this new Mac OS X-compatible version,
will remain so for many years to come.
Inspiration 7 costs $70, and 30-day free trial version is
available as a 15.6 MB download.
[Kirk McElhearn is a freelance writer and translator and living in
a village in the French Alps. He is co-author of Microsoft Office
v. X Inside Out, published by Microsoft Press.]
PayBITS: Did this article inspire you to try Inspiration?
Consider supporting Kirk with a few bucks via PayPal!
<https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=kirk%40mcelhearn.com>
Read more about PayBITS: <http://www.tidbits.com/paybits/>
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