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Fred's Follies



Author: Fred Cranston
Date: December , 1987
Keywords: key caps screen dump hints tips stepping out autoblack
Text: Last month I mentioned a problem dealing with Lon Poole's suggestion for getting a screen dump of Key Caps when various keys were held down. In going through an old notebook, I came upon the following hint (source unknown) which seems to work fine. To get a MacPaint picture of your keyboard from Key Caps when either OPTION or SHIFT OPTION is held down, follow these directions exactly and in this order: (1) Close all windows and go to the FINDER; (2) Open Key Caps to the desired font; (3) Push and hold down OPTION (or SHIFT OPTION); (4) Push and hold down mouse button; (5) Release OPTION (or SHIFT OPTION); (6) Press COMMAND SHIFT 3 and release; (7) Press OPTION (or SHIFT OPTION); (8) Release mouse button; (9) Release OPTION (or SHIFT OPTION). The MacPaint icon for this keyboard will appear in the appropriate place. Janet Spinas has discovered that the above will work even with other windows open if you put the arrow on the bar heading of the Key Caps window just as Lon Poole suggested, but it is absolutely necessary that you do the above items in exactly the listed order. (The above procedure will print your Key Caps if you use COMMAND SHIFT 4 in step 6.) I ran across another problem with one of Lon Poole's hints. As you know, in printing in Faster mode, you may get bi-directional printing if you press CAPS LOCK, SHIFT, and OPTION while you click OK in the print dialog box. This gives Faster Faster printing. It has two problems: (1) unless your printer is very well aligned, the two directions don't match as they should and you may get output that looks like italic or worse; (2) it doesn't work if you have chosen TALL ADJUSTED from the Page Setup box. The first problem was partially solved by John Wentworth at Capital Business Machines. He aligned everything so that I can now print bi-directional on Faster without it looking too peculiar. I have not found a solution to the second problem other than not using TALL ADJUSTED. I will only use TALL ADJUSTED in the future on documents containing graphics which need perfect circles. Another folly has to do with paper jamming on an Image Write II. For almost 2 years I have put up with this problem of having about 25% of all printouts being jammed and having to start over. My folly was in thinking that the problem was that I was not getting the paper positioned properly under the paper bail. This was not the problem at all. Early models of the ImageWriter II had a mechanical paper detector which causes the jamming. You can tell if you have this model by looking at the left side of the platen. Is there an extra "thing" about 10 centimeters long up against the left side of the platen on your model? If so, you can get an optical retrofit from Apple that the aforementioned John Wentworth told me about and which he installed which solves this problem. If you are having a similar jamming problem, he can fix it for about $60. It is probably better to get the retrofit than just to remove the "thing". You still want to get warned when you are out of paper. While doing this John also adjusted my printer so that it seems to work better than new. You may recall that last month I was not too kind in my remarks about Stepping Out because of the difficulty (BOMB) I had with Stepping Out and my screen saver. I sent the column to the designers, Berkeley System Design, and received a letter back immediately telling me that I could use the shareware screen saver AutoBlack 1.5; and, if I didn't have access to a bulletin board, just let them know and they would send me a copy. I did obtain AutoBlack 1.5, removed my old screen saver and installed this new one. It works even better than my old one because I can now use Stepping Out. Stepping Out now receives my recommendation. Finally, two requests. (1) I know how to initialize a 400 K disk in HFS but who can tell me how I can use a Mac Plus to initialize an 800 K disk in MFS (that is, Flat) rather than HFS? (2) Can anyone tell me what Command-? I can use to get out of an interminable disk swap (or other undesired instruction on the screen) without having to shut down and reboot?

Copyright © december , 1987 by Fred Cranston


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