NVMUG eNews 11/11/2006
Last updated 11/15/2006
PLANS for a SPECIAL MEETING, Questions and Help, and an addition to the library
We began with an open circle for questions and answers. Then Gene Levine talked about the progress the committee has made toward a possible special NVMUG meeting and we agreed that they should go on to the next steps. And Hartley Jackson presented a printed booklet on "Exploring with Pages." .
1. Special Meeting in January?
Gene showed and explained the NVMUG special meeting brochure that he developed based upon last month's meeting, He developed it as starting point for further discussion.
Gene has talked to a sales manager for an Apple Certified Reseller in Vermont who seemed interested and wanted to know more about what we would want them to present. I talked to someone else who asked the same question. So we are sending asking you to tell us what you want before we tell them what we want for the program. No commitments have been made.
Gene has also talked to someone about a meeting place with broadband access and very good food. Again, no commitments have been made.
We discussed the number of people and who we might invite at the meeting. It appears that we would need 40 to 50 people.
We agreed that the committee, Gene Levine, Midge Lubot, and some help by Hartley Jackson, should send a survey to our members and request a response within a week, before we see how many people are interested outside of NVMUG.
We discussed the program which might start with a swap meet to which everyone would be invited at no cost.
The meeting might consist of three break out sessions in the morning, a general session at lunch, and three break-out sessions in the afternoon.
The topics that we discussed for the sessions included networking in a home and small office environment in the morning and repeated in the afternoon if there is enough interest. Two other morning breakouts suggested were sharing data across the Macintosh/Windows boundary, and using iTunes, iPhoto, iWeb, GarageBand, Pages, and Keynote together.
Two afternoon breakouts suggested were digital photography and creating a DVD and putting things on it (iMovie, iTunes, backup material). and using dot-mac to create web pages, synchronize calendars, address books and iTunes between computers.
All of these and iChat are just starting points until we you tell us what you are interested in, and the vendor responds to our list of topics with what the vendor would do.
We talked about the vendor demonstrating equipment, or almost anything else to everyone at a quality luncheon buffet, and possible surprises as bookends at the start and end of the meeting.
We want to know your interests before approaching the vendor. So please respond this week to the survey.
Gene asked if we really wanted to do it, and why. We agreed that we wanted to do it for fun, to have a good time. Almost all the people at the meeting said they would like to have the program and would be willing to pay the $20 to $25 it might cost, including the meal.
We agreed that this should be fun event, a special meeting not something that would take a lot of work like an expo. We agreed that we want people to attend who would enjoy this fun event. If enough people want this special meeting event we will try make it happen. If not enough people express an interest, we will hold our normal meeting in January instead.
We agreed that we want to give first priority to NVMUG members and friends. That there should be something of interest to PC owners who might or might not be considering Macintosh computers. We agreed that second priority would be given to the vendor's customers, and to other Vermont user group members.
So, please respond to the survey or this newsletter. Let us know the topics you would like covered if you like. Most important, let us know if you think you (and any friends) will attend so we can decide whether to go ahead or not.
2. Questions and Solutions
Brendan Hadish and Cathy Ajamie discussed their iPods with the group. Brendan has his whole collection of show tune CDs on his new iPod, 1400 songs. It is evident that people who love their Macs also love their iPods.
Brendan did have one problem. The trackball on his mouse was working fine, but now it only works in one direction. He wondered if anyone knew whether it just needed cleaning. He was advised to call Small Dog where he bought it.
Cathy Ajamie said she uses her iBook G4 every day. She downloads podcasts. But now it takes forever to open AppleWorks. She was told that there used to be a problem because Recent Items were never deleted from AppleWorks.
Warren suggested that she disable Show Recent Items in Preferences under the AppleWorks menu. Once this was done, AppleWorks opened much faster. Midge also used this and her AppleWorks opened faster. (My AppleWorks program has a script Trash Recent Items in the Script Menu, and I just cleared out a bunch of aliases for very old "recent" items.)
Midge was having problems with transfering AppleWorks files to Pages. Someone said that it might be because of problems with the old AppleWorks fonts. If you have Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, you have a Font Book program in Applications. Use the File menu Validate Fonts to identify any fonts with problems. It will warn you about fonts you probably should not use and ask if you want to remove them
Font Explorer X can do similar things for older Max OS X versions. Download it from www.linotype.com/fontexplorerX (I found it by searching for Font Explorer X using Google.)
Here is what their web site says FontExplorer X sets a new standard for font management software. Linotype is pleased to announce the missing link to your font collection. With the new FontExplorerª X, font management, font sorting, font shopping and font discovery are simple and fun! FontExplorerª X gives computer users all the functionality they ever dreamed Ð easy to use with an elegant style. Download the Mac OS X version now, or subscribe to our monthly newsletter and be notified when the Windows version becomes available! Supported languages are English and German, more versions are coming soon.
Downloading is free. I have not downloaded it so I cannot confirm that it performs the validation function.
Cathy wanted to see font names the way the font actually looks. Stephen told her to look in AppleWorks Preferences under General where she can check (or uncheck) the option Font Menu in Actual Fonts.
Save as dialog only shows the last few files or file, to save it to. If this is not what you want, click on the right facing triangle on the right to get the full navigation window so you can "Save as" to anywhere.
Geof, Gene, Stephen, and Warren answering questions faster than I could catch them.
As a teacher, Cathy needs to document student behavior. She has set up an AppleWorks database for each student for this purpose, but needs to print multiple people or reports on one page.
Everyone was interested in Cathy's questions.
Someone said that one way to do this is to include an arbitrary field field to trip this item. Then make a report with a layout to get the info you want from all of these reports. It will take some work, but many teachers are doing this kind of thing with AppleWorks.
Stephen suggested that Cathy check with AppleWorks User Group, AWUG.org to see if they already have a template for this. In AppleÕs online Support you can search for Discussions using AppleWorks with other keywords. It will take some time because there are so many discussion items.
This lead to quite a discussion about AppleWorks. No one knew if there was a simple flat file database program on the Mac that would make a reasonable replacement for the AppleWorks database.
Geof said that AppleWorks is now an unsupported program. A lot of teachers may be left hanging.
Stephen recommended using Show Starting Points in the AppleWorks File menu and, selecting the Web tab. There you will find Extras, Newsletter, and Templates. If you choose templates you will find "For Schools:" with the Apple Learning Interchange, and the Apple Learning Interchange Template Pages. You will also find Janet Caughlin's Templates, and AppleWorks User Group Templates references. Extras includes other Internet resources. None of these may solve the problem and they may not be new, but they are worth a try.
Someone said that 90% of people use only 10% of a program. Gene said that setting up a report is easy, and to go to Help to learn how.
Someone said that Open Office is a free Unix program that has a database with it. Open Office is compatible with Microsoft Office, except that Microsoft Office does not work with the database.
Gene opened up Excel for Cathy and briefly showed her how it could do her reports, but it is not really a database. He also said that she could probably do what she wants to do in OmniOutliner. It is an outline program, not a database, but you can collapse items and search it.
FileMaker could be described as AppleWorks which has grown up to be a big, expensive, and complicated relational database program.
(In my opinion the ideal answer would be for FileMaker to follow AdobeÕs PhotoShop example and produce junior version designed for nonprofessional users - a database that is even more intuitive than AppleWorks was.)
Someone said that, if a file does not open right in Preview, control-click on it and choose Open with Acrobat Reader in the resulting pull-down menu.
If you want a list of all shortcuts, you can go to the Apple site, look for Widgets, and search for Shortcut.
Unannounced changes in shortcuts in Microsoft programs can cause problems, for example where Microsoft uses Ctrl-(and a key) where the standard is Apple-(and the key). Gene said that Apple is not always consistent with their own standards. Cmd-D originally meant delete, but now you use the delete key to delete and Cmd-D means duplicate in Mac OS X programs. The difference is that in Apple programs the changed short cut keys are shown in the pull-down menus, in Excel the changes do not work the same and are not shown in the pull-down menu.
3. Exploring with Pages
Hartley Jackson said he had something to show the group if they were interested. He had a printed book with over 100 pages, Exploring with Pages, about exploring Pages using Pages. The entire book was produced using Pages. Only two copies were printed using a shareware program, CocoaBooklet, by Fabian Conus. Richard Lubot said he had a stapler that could staple it. Hartley also gave the club library a CD with copies of the book in PDF format and in Pages format.
Hartley explained that the book is not good enough to consider publishing, and it would probably take six more months of part-time work to make it good enough to call it a finished book. But, it made him feel good just to see a printed copy. There was some discussion about how the book might be published if it were in finished form. Hartley said that, if and when he gets done, and he does try to distribute it, it might be through user groups.
Stephen Farber just sent me a this:
News is where you find it:< /br> If Think Secret is copied in PC Mag it must be ...
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2028393,00.asp
If this rumor is even close to true, it may take a lot longer to produce the revision.
