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This article first appeared in the April 1998 issue of the Louisville Computer News.. It was written by Lee Larson.
Over the last few weeks readers have sent email asking several different questions which have the same answer. Here are two of them. "I downloaded a file called wordfile.doc from my company's server. When I double-click it on my Mac, Word doesn't open it. My Windows95 machine doesn't have this problem." "When I use my friend's Macintosh, I can click on an email address in her word processor and Eudora automatically opens to let me send mail to that address. My machine doesn't do that. Why?"
The answer to both questions is "Internet Config."
Internet Config, known as IC by its friends, should be the glue holding together the various Internet-related things you do on your Mac. IC is a free program written by two Australians. The first of them is Peter Lewis, a well-known author of Macintosh networking software such as Anarchie and NetPresenz. The second goes by the nom-de-Internet of Quinn-sort of like Cher. Quinn now works for Apple.
Their most recent version is 1.4. An easy way to think of IC is as a central dispatcher that tells programs what to do when presented with Internet related decisions. When a program wants to know something like your preferred email address, or the address of your home page, all it has to do is ask IC. The advantage of storing all this information in IC is that when something changes, you only have to make the update in one place instead of updating all the different programs which might use the information. Also, when you get a new program, it's already configured for your particular setup. Most new Macintosh Internet applications are IC smart.
But, there's much more to this database idea than just a place to store your email address. IC can tell programs about how to handle file extension mappings and which helper programs to use.
To see why this solves the first problem mentioned above, we have to think a little about the relationship between files on the Macintosh and files on the Internet. On the Internet, as on most operating systems, the type of a file is identified by the extension on the name. A file such as wordfile.doc can be identified as a Microsoft Word file by the extension "doc" on its name. In this case, the extension tells Windows to automatically open the file with Microsoft Word. In Windows, there is a database, called the Registry where these associations between programs and file extensions are stored. Anyone can edit the Registry to change the associations between extensions and programs.
On the Mac, things are done a bit differently. Every file on the Mac has a file type, telling the format of the file, and a creator code, telling what program should be used to read the file. Both the file type and the creator are stored as invisible four letter codes. When you double-click a Macintosh file, the operating system looks at the four letter creator code to see what program to run. The program looks at the four letter code the file type to see if it can make sense of the contents. (Programs like Norton Utilities, File Buddy and ResEdit can edit file types and creators.)
For example, Microsoft Word files on the Mac have a file type of WDBN and a creator code MSWD. The Macintosh operating system doesn't know to let Word have a look at the file wordfile.doc, unless the correct creator code has been set somewhere along the way. This is where IC comes in. Any program downloading wordfile.doc can ask IC what kind of file it ought to be. IC tells it to set the type and creator to WDBN and MSWD as it's downloading the file, and then the file becomes double-clickable.
The second problem is solved by using IC's list of helper programs.
To see what's going on here, we have to discuss another of those strange Internet acronyms called a URL, which is short for Uniform Resource Locater. Everybody is familiar with URL's by now because there's one at the bottom of nearly every advertisement. For example, http://www.louisville.edu/~lmlars01 is a URL for the World Wide Web which takes you to my personal home page. Another example is a URL for one of my email addresses, LeeMLarson@aol.com. One of the convenient things you can make your computer do is automatically use URL's.
For example, my favorite email program is Claris Emailer. Suppose I get an email message which contains the Web address http://www.apple.com. All I have to do is command-click the URL in the email and my preferred web browser, Internet Explorer, takes me to Apple's Web page. On the other hand, if I command-click on mailto:president@whitehouse.gov in my word processor, Nisus Writer, a pre-addressed blank email message to Bill Clinton appears in Emailer. The trick to making all this work smoothly is Internet Config. I told IC that Internet Explorer is my helper program for Web URL's and Emailer is my helper for mail. When I shift-click a URL, the program checks with IC to see which program should handle the URL.
These examples are just the tip of the iceberg. IC has many other features which make it an almost indispensable add-on for carefree Internet surfing.
Internet Config comes on many of the new Mac OS CD's from Apple, and can be downloaded from numerous sites around the Internet. The official URL for North American downloads is ftp://ftp.share.com/internet-configuration/.
Software Updates
Shortly after the release of Mac OS 8.1 in early February, it was pointed out by many users that disk checkers such as Norton Utilities reported some of the files were damaged. It turned out that the Installer program was appending about a dozen harmless and unnecessary bytes to the end of a few files from Open Transport 1.3. Apple promptly posted an Open Transport 1.3 to 1.3.1 updater which does nothing but fix this problem.
On February 27, a new version of the Mac OS 8.1 update was posted to Apple's web site. The only change to this update is the addition of the Open Transport 1.3 to 1.3.1 Update. If you're using the original Mac OS 8.1 update with the extra bytes, there's no pressing reason to upgrade. If your aesthetic sensibilities are bothered by the extra bytes, the upgrades can be found at ftp://ftp.share.com/internet-configuration/.
Another approach to fixing the Open Transport files is to download the Conflict Catcher 4.1.1 upgrade from Casady & Greene, Inc., http://www.casadyg.com/. The upgrader will work on any version of Conflict Catcher 4. The new version automatically fixes the oversized Open Transport files, fixes a few minor bugs and expands the extension database.
Casady & Greene has also updated Spell Catcher to 1.5.9. The upgrade fixes a few minor problems and includes some expanded dictionaries. The upgrade is available on their web site, listed above. I have to warn you that I've had mixed success with the upgrade. I've used Spell Catcher 1.5.8 for several months on two machines. On my machine at home, version 1.5.9 runs perfectly. On the machine in my office, 1.5.8 is faultless, but 1.5.9 consistently crashes the foreground program with a type 4 error. Quite a bit of tinkering still hasn't pinpointed the problem, and tech support at Casady & Greene is stumped.
AppleShare IP version 5.0.3 updates version 5.0.2 so that it works with G3 systems and Mac OS 8.1. It also fixes the problems of the web server crashing when it's restarted under a heavy load, of improper time-outs of HTTP KeepAlive sessions by the server, and of delays in remote mail delivery. The AppleShare IP Print Server 5.0.3 fixes a network time-out bug and a printing problem. The upgrader can be found at http://swupdates.info.apple.com/ .
Deneba, http://www.deneba.com, has released Colada 2.0, a Canvas 5.03 tool for publishing Java-based web pages. Colada generates complete web pages or Java applets from any Canvas document. It's a powerful way to create complex and feature-rich web pages. The tool is free at Deneba's website. You must have Canvas 5.03 to use Colada. An updater to 5.03 for other versions of Canvas 5 is also available online.
Nisus Software has revved Nisus Writer to 5.1.2. It seems nothing more than an effort to fix a few bugs in an already very stable product. I do most of my writing with Nisus Writer and have noticed no differences when I switched from 5.1.1 to 5.1.2. The upgrade is available at http://www.nisus.com.
Keeping that "Apple II Forever" spirit alive, F. E. Systems released Bernie ][ The Rescue version 1.2, a major update to the popular, heavy-duty Apple IIgs emulation software. It is the only Apple II emulation software that features Apple IIgs and classic Apple II emulation. Bernie ][ The Rescue beats the fastest Apple IIgs ever built, offering processing power more than ten times the original. It is $25 shareware from http://www.magnet.ch/emutech/Bernie.
Louisville Computer Society
There will be a presentation about setting up ethernet and Appletalk networks during the April 27 meeting of The Louisville Computer Society. The meeting, which is open to all, will be at 7 P.M. in the East Government Center on Juneau Drive in Middletown. More information can be obtained from the Louisville Computer Society's web page http://www.aye.net/~lcs/.
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