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Silicon Times Report Issue 1110
SILICON TIMES REPORT
====================
INTERNATIONAL ONLINE MAGAZINE
=============================
from
STR Electronic Publishing Inc.
A subsidiary of
STR Worldwide CompNews Inc.
March 10, 1995 No. 1110
======================================================================
Silicon Times Report
International OnLine Magazine
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> 03/10/95 STR 1110 "The Original * Independent * OnLine Magazine!"
"""""""""""""""""
- STR INDUSTRY REPORT - PNG GRAPHIC SPEC - CENSORSHIP?
- THUMBS+PLUS v2.0c - CPU CRIME SEMINAR - ALI-BABA NIXED
- IBM CLEARED! - FRACTINIT 19 - IBM BUTTERFLY
- CF Review - People Talking - Jaguar News
-* WINDOWS'95 - AUGUST 1995! *-
-* INFO AGE FUTURE BLEAK? *-
-* SUPREME COURT & YOU! *-
==========================================================================
STReport International OnLine Magazine
The Original * Independent * OnLine Magazine
-* FEATURING WEEKLY *-
"Accurate UP-TO-DATE News and Information"
Current Events, Original Articles, Tips, Rumors, and Information
Hardware - Software - Corporate - R & D - Imports
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"Enjoy CompuServe's forums; where information is at its very best!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
LottoMan Results: 03/04/95: four 2# matches
----------------
> From the Editor's Desk "Saying it like it is!"
""""""""""""""""""""""
OUCH! This is a BIG issue!! Sorry 'bout that ..but we have some
very important information in this issue and we felt that it would be best
if you got it all at once instead of in segments. The NEW Graphic
Specification is here courtesy of the Go Graphics Group. This is the spec
that's to replace the now clobbered GIF spec. Yes, clobbered. Unisys'
and it's GIFiasco has brought about this speedy upgrade and change.
Remember, everything happens for the best.
Also in this issue, is the news of the upgrade to Thumbs+Plus.
Version 2.0c is announced and available. Friends, this program has got to
be one of the very best overall graphics tools available anywhere in the
world. It does it all and does it well. I might add, it provides the
very best looking thumbnails of your graphics libraries ..bar none. Read
about the powerful update to this fine program in this issue.
AND... INDEO Video has been updated with the updates already in
release. Plus... Microsoft re-affirms the shipping date for Win'95 will
be August of 1995. Read all about how you can update your Video for
Windows 1.1d. Spring Comdex is less than eight weeks away. Already the
new goodies are in the spotlights. The teasers are flying wildly
throughout the computing community. It'll be a fun time for all.
Ralph...
Of Special Note:
----------------
STReport will be branching out further to Internet's userbase in the
very near future. We've received numerous requests to receive STReport
from a wide variety of Internet addresses. As a result, we're putting
together an Internet distribution/mailing list for those who wish to
receive STReport on a regular basis, and we'll UUENCODE each issue and
mail it to you.
If you're interested in being added to our mailing list, please, send
your requests to either "dpj@delphi.com" or, RMARIANO@DELPHI.COM. Look
for mailings to begin by October first. We are also considering a number
of Internet ftp sites in which to post our issues for as well. Whatever
we can do to make STReport available to you. we'll try it!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
STReport's Staff DEDICATED TO SERVING YOU!
""""""""""""""""
Publisher -Editor
""""""""""""""""""
Ralph F. Mariano
Lloyd E. Pulley, Editor, Current Affairs
Section Editors
"""""""""""""""
PC SECTION AMIGA SECTION MAC SECTION ATARI SECTION
---------- ------------- ----------- -------------
R.D. Stevens R. Niles J. Deegan D. P. Jacobson
STReport Staff Editors:
"""""""""""""""""""""""
Michael Arthur John Deegan Brad Martin
John Szczepanik Paul Guillot Joseph Mirando
Doyle Helms Frank Sereno John Duckworth
Jeff Coe Steve Keipe Guillaume Brasseur
Melanie Bell Jay Levy Jeff Kovach
Marty Mankins Carl Prehn Paul Charchian
Contributing Correspondents:
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Dominick J. Fontana Norman Boucher Clemens Chin
Eric Jerue Ron Deal Mike Barnwell
Ed Westhusing Glenwood Drake Vernon W.Smith
Bruno Puglia Paul Haris Kevin Miller
Craig Harris Allen Chang Tim Holt
Patrick Hudlow Tom Sherwin
Please, submit letters to the editor, articles, reviews, etc...
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IMPORTANT NOTICE
----------------
STReport, with its policy of not accepting any paid advertising, has over
the years developed the reputation of "saying it like it really is". When
it comes to our editorials, product evaluations, reviews and over-views,
we shall always keep our readers interests first and foremost. With the
user in mind, STReport further pledges to maintain the reader confidence
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such". All we ask is that our readers make certain the manufacturers,
publishers etc., know exactly where the information about their products
appeared. In closing, we shall arduously endeavor to meet and further
develop the high standards of straight forwardness our readers have come
to expect in each and every issue.
The Staff & Editors
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> STR INDUSTRY REPORT LATE BREAKING INDUSTRY-WIDE NEWS
"""""""""""""""""""
IBM/POWER-PC/PC SECTION (I)
===========================
Computer Products Update - CPU Report
------------------------ ----------
Weekly Happenings in the Computer World
Issue #10
Compiled by: Lloyd E. Pulley, Sr.
******* General Computer News *******
>> Jury Clears IBM in RSI Suit <<
Ending the first case of its kind against IBM to go to trial, a jury
in Hastings, Minnesota, this week ruled the company is not liable for
the disabling repetitive stress injuries a secretary said she suffered
from using IBM keyboards.
Plaintiff Nancy Urbanski also sued Apple Computer Inc. That suit was
part of the same trial until Apple settled for an undisclosed amount
last week because of attorney errors.
The suit contended IBM and Apple did not adequately warn her about
the potential for repetitive stress injuries to her hands and arms. She
says she is unable to perform her job or household tasks.
Thousands of similar suits have been filed alleging computer manufac-
turers were negligent in designing keyboards and warning users.
Last February, a jury in Houston decided that Compaq Computer Corp.
was not liable for injuries suffered by a secretary who used one of its
computers. The company, which is the largest maker of personal
computers, has since started putting warning labels on some of its
keyboards.
>> IBM Cuts PC Prices <<
IBM Corp., saying it is intent on maintaining competitive prices, has
announced price cuts of up to 22% on selected desktops and servers.
The cuts range up to 22% on IBM's Personal Computer 300 and 700
Series and Performance Series, and up to 17% on selected IBM Server 95
and PC Server 300 models.
For example, the IBM PC 300, with a 66MHz 486DX2 microprocessor, 8MB
of RAM and a 540MB hard disk, is now priced at $1,645, down from $1,885.
The PC Server 300, with a 60MHz Pentium microprocessor, 16MB of RAM,
nine storage bays, eight expansion slots and a 1GB hard disk, is now
priced at $3,799, down from $4,499.
>> Toshiba, NEC Consider Hikes <<
Officials of Toshiba Corp. this week indicated the Japanese giant is
considering raising its export prices of semiconductors to the U.S. to
cope with the yen's recent surge against the dollar.
Meanwhile NEC Corp., Japan's biggest chip maker, plans to raise its
export prices of memory chips to the U.S. for the same quarter, but has
yet to decide by how much.
The rest of Japan's five major semiconductor producers - Hitachi
Ltd., Fujitsu Ltd. and Mitsubishi Electric Corp - have not decided
whether they will increase export prices.
>> IBM Expects Large OS Market Share <<
IBM Corp. said this week that it hopes to capture 40% of the European
market for the latest generation of operating system software.
IBM's German software director, Richard Siebt, is reported as saying
that by the end of 1996 -- after the introduction of Microsoft Corp.'s
Windows 95 -- IBM expects to have a 40% share of the market for this new
type of operating system.
In Germany alone, IBM's key business software clients will have
installed at least one million versions of OS/2 Warp by the end of next
year, Seibt said. "This is a conservative estimate," he said, adding
that IBM sold 270,000 versions of the software package in Germany during
the first two months of this year and that it was currently shipping
1,000 copies a day.
>> Justice Dept., Microsoft Appeal <<
A federal appellate court now officially has been asked to reverse
U.S. District Judge Stanley Sporkin's rejection of the antitrust
agreement hammered out by the Justice Department and Microsoft Corp.
Sporkin, on Feb. 14, rejected the controversial consent decree
reached last July by Microsoft and the Justice Department. The judge
ruled the agreement, which deals mainly with Microsoft's licensing
practices for its operating systems, was too narrow and didn't address
numerous allegations against Microsoft.
>> NEC Offers Pentium Notebooks <<
Three new Versa P Series notebooks with a 10.4-inch screen and based
on Intel Corp.'s Pentium chip have been introduced by NEC Technologies
Inc.
The units will be available later this month in North America through
NEC's network of authorized dealers with estimated prices starting at
$5,899.
>> Compaq Cuts PC Prices <<
Compaq Computer Corp. has lowered prices on a wide array of its
business desktop PCs. The reductions, which range up to 23%, affect 66
models in the Compaq Deskpro XL, Compaq Deskpro XE and Compaq ProLinea
families.
Current models in the flagship Compaq Deskpro XL family were reduced
in price from 8 to 14 percent. Prices for these models with hard disks
now start at less than $2,100. Most of the price reductions for the
Compaq Deskpro XL line affect current Pentium-based models. In addition,
Compaq has added eight new 75 and 100MHz Pentium-based models to the
high performance line.
Models in the Compaq Deskpro XE family, which are being replaced by
new Deskpro product, have been cut in price from 8 to 23 percent. These
products will be available while supplies last. Prices for the 486-based
Compaq Deskpro XE with a 170MB hard disk now start at about $1,199.
The current Compaq ProLinea desktop and mini-tower products have been
reduced in price from 5 to 18% to align them with the prices of newer
models. Current Compaq ProLinea models, with a 270MB hard disk, now
start at about $1,049.
Compaq has also lowered prices of its most popular memory options for
both desktop and server PCs by as much as 36 percent.
>> NexGen Promises Smaller Chip <<
NexGen Inc. says it will expand its Nx586 microprocessor line with a
new, smaller design that will result in significant price-performance
improvements.
The new chip will be 40% smaller in size than the current Nx586 CPU
as well as comparable Pentium microprocessors from Intel Corp. NexGen
says the smaller die size offers a higher chip per wafer yield. In
addition, with the chip's active elements positioned more closely
together, data is transmitted more quickly, giving a higher speed to the
microprocessor.
NexGen says the new chip is scheduled to become available by mid-
year.
>> Hayes Drops Smartcom Prices <<
Hayes Microcomputer Products Inc. is shipping Smartcom Data/Fax Pro,
its Windows communications fax modem software, for an estimated retail
price of $79.99.
Hayes officials said the new price for its software is less than half
the price of competitive software programs from companies.
Hayes also said it cut prices for its Smartcom for Windows product to
$49.99, its Smartcom BBS Dialer to $14.99 and Smartcom II for the Mac to
$119.99. Both Smartcom Data/Fax Pro and Smartcom II for the Mac software
were formerly priced at $149.
>> Microsoft Nixes 'Ali Baba' Plan <<
The controversial "Ali Baba" plan to include encrypted versions of
new products on the same compact disk that will carry the upcoming
Windows 95 software has been killed by Microsoft Corp.
Microsoft Vice President Michael J. Maples is quoted as saying Chairman
Bill Gates decided to drop the link to Windows 95, not because of angry
reaction to the proposal by competitors and retailers, but because of
"logistical problems" of maintaining a mixed inventory of some disks
that had the feature and others that did not.
The Ali Baba plan would have allowed users of Windows 95, due out in
late summer, to preview other Microsoft products on the CD, such as
spreadsheet or word-processing software, then purchase them by calling
in a credit-card number and receiving a special code to "unlock" the
program.
Maples told the wire service that even though Microsoft will not link
Ali Baba to Windows, it still plans to use the approach with future
products.
>> Toshiba Unit Sports ROM Drive <<
Toshiba Corp. is bringing to the U.S. its first notebook computer
with an integrated 5.25-inch compact-drive read-only-memory drive.
The new Satellite Pro T2150 CD series is equipped with a "hot plug"
for an external floppy disk drive, allowing consumers to simultaneously
use a CD-ROM drive and a floppy disk drive.
A Toshiba spokesman said a higher-end model with active-matrix color
screen, which comes standard with a hard disk drive capacity of 520
million bytes, starts at $4,899.
>> K-Mart to Offer CD-ROM Line <<
SoftKey International Inc. reports that after a test market program,
K-Mart Inc. has agreed to carry its One Stop CD Shop product line in all
2,208 retail stores nationwide.
The software publisher says the One Stop products will be sold off
free-standing racks -- the first time the retail chain has installed a
stand-alone consumer software rack system in virtually all store
locations.
One Stop CD Shop is SoftKey's line of value-priced multi-CD ROM pack-
ages for Windows and Macintosh computers. The initial version offers 11
CD- ROMs that include a mix of games, personal productivity, lifestyle
and reference titles.
>> Info Age's Bleak Future Forecast <<
The Information Age could bring a world where corporations take over
from nation states and a tiny elite defends itself from dispossessed
masses, predicted a British professor at a business conference taking
place today in London.
Ian Angell, a professor at the London School for Economics gave this
gloomy view: "Some people foresee a new Middle Ages with a natural state
of inequality, with urban areas protected as castles, but
electronically."
It is the growing value of information over other commodities that
will propel the world to such a dark future, weakening ties between big
business and any fixed place. Information technology will encourage
teleworking and video conferencing, eliminating the need for an office
except as a social event for employees to bond as community and cement
their ties of loyalty to the company.
Angell predicted property prices will crash and corporations will
move where profit is highest and regulation weakest. In addition, nation
states will break up as regions dump poorer areas in the fight to get
global business, which would seek the securest haven for its information
and prized "knowledge workers." Global enterprises would see themselves
as owners of their staff and demand their undivided allegiance.
He forecast that the prized and wealthy elite will form one-tenth of
the world's population, while the rest will become the "information
poor" -- unwanted and of decreasing use to business.
>> IBM Butterfly Emerges This Week <<
Butterfly, the latest ThinkPad model in IBM's portable computer line,
is to officially launch this week and analysts are predicting the
computer maker won't be able to meet initial demand.
The Butterfly has an expanding keyboard that unfolds from inside the
machine into a larger size keyboard when the tiny 4.5- pound computer is
opened. The screen is a notebook size 10.4- inch color screen. Upon
opening, the keyboard inside the ThinkPad 701C mechanically expands and
opens to a fuller size keyboard with 85 keys, some hanging over the
machine's edges, the closest a subnotebook has come to the standard 102
keys.
The units are pricey -- ranging from $3,800 to about $5,600, depen-
ding on the screen, the processor, memory and the size of the hard drive
-- and the first versions are designed on Intel Corp.'s '486 processors,
not the faster Pentium.
The new ThinkPads also include a modem, an internal speaker for
audio, alight AC adapter and a thin external floppy drive. It can act as
answering machine, fax recipient and speaker phone. Battery life
averages three hours.
>> IBM to Make Autodesk Software <<
For undisclosed terms, IBM has agreed to make and distribute software
products for Autodesk Inc. through a new outsourcing agreement.
Reports say the deal calls for the IBM Software Manufacturing
Solutions to handle CD-ROM and traditional diskette replication,
packaging and product distribution for Autodesk products.
Officials with Autodesk, a major supplier of design software and PC
animation tools, said the increased flexibility and additional resources
IBM brings will allow Autodesk to invest in new products, markets and
channels, and expand its business without significantly increasing
headcount.
>> Panasonic Pentium Portable Ships <<
Panasonic Personal Computer Co. this week launched its first Pentium
multimedia notebook computer with a 5.25-inch integrated CD-ROM drive.
Part of Panasonic's V41 line of computers, the new machine features
the Intel Pentium 75 MHz chip with 16KB internal cache and 256KB
external cache. The company said the V41 Pentium model runs 50% faster
than DX4/100 MHz models and up to 20% faster than leading Pentium
portables.
Prices range from $3,999 to $8,399 depending on the user-selected
configurations.
>> Compton's Sued Over Alleged Slur <<
Offended by a computer program's ability to recognize and respond to
a racial slur, a man has filed a $40 million libel suit against electronic
encyclopedia publishers at Compton's NewMedia.
Thomas D. Wallace says in his suit that he and his sons, Terry, Todd
and Troy, suffered emotional distress after finding the word "nigger" in
the Compton's encyclopedia software. The suit also names Compton's owner,
Tribune Co. of Chicago, and Best Buy, where the software was purchased.
Reports say that "Wallace, who is black, said he discovered the slur
when he inadvertently typed 'nigger' while looking up the Niger River.
In response, the computer found references under 'Drama,' 'Martin Luther
King Jr.,' 'Black Americans or African Americans' and 'English
Literature.'"
Wallace's first suit in state district court was dismissed in
December and that he refiled the suit in U.S. District Court in Los
Angeles last week.
Meanwhile, Tribune Co. spokesman Joseph A. Hays said the word appears
in a manuscript, the title of a play, the title of a book and a quote in
which someone attempted to slur King.
"The complaint is without merit," he said. "What's more, it's just
plain silly."
_____________________________________________
> INFO HIGHWAY GRIDLOCK? STR FOCUS!
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SUPREME COURT JUSTICES EXPRESS CONCERN ABOUT COMPUTER PRIVACY;
OPINIONS SUGGEST MOUNTING INTEREST ON NATION'S HIGHEST COURT
For IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 1, 1994
A majority of the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, ruling in a criminal
evidence case, today suggested that they had serious concerns about the
potential invasion to individual privacy raised by the nation's increasing
reliance on computer technology.
In a series of opinions in a case from Arizona about whether evidence
seized by the police because of a computer error could be used during
trial, the justices raised questions about the impact of computers,
particularly on law enforcement.
"Although we believe the Court ruled incorrectly in deciding that the
evidence could be used during trial, I think the majority opinion is quite
narrow," said Steven Shapiro, ACLU Legal Director. "The more lasting
significance of the case," he added, "may be that a majority of the Court
seems quite troubled by the risk that computer technology poses to
personal privacy.
"In particular," Shapiro said, "a majority of the Court was clearly
unwilling to create a new and broad exception to the Exclusionary Rule
whenever government officials violate the Fourth Amendment based on a
computer error."
In his majority opinion for the Court, Chief Justice Rehnquist reversed a
decision of the Arizona Supreme Court, which had ruled that the evidence
could not be used because it had been seized during what turned out to be
an arrest based on a mistaken warrant. Justices O'Connor, Scalia, Kennedy,
Souter, Thomas and Breyer joined the Chief Justice's decision.
But Justice O'Connor wrote a concurring opinion, which was joined by
Justices Souter and Breyer, that discussed the growth of technology and
its impact on law enforcement. "In recent years, we have witnessed the
advent of powerful, computer-based recordkeeping systems that facilitate
arrests in ways that have never before been possible," O'Connor said. "The
police, of course, are entitled to enjoy the substantial advantages this
technology confers. They may not, however, rely on it blindly. With the
benefits of more efficient law enforcement mechanisms comes the burden of
corresponding constitutional responsibilities.
And in another brief concurring opinion, Justice Souter, who was joined by
Justice Breyer, wrote that "our very concept of deterrence by exclusion of
evidence should extend to the government as a whole, not merely the
police, on the ground that there would otherwise be no reasonable
expectation of keeping the number of resulting false arrests within an
acceptable minimum limit."
Justice Ginsburg, in a dissenting opinion joined by Justice Stevens, wrote
that "widespread reliance on computers to store and convey information
generates, along with manifold benefits, new possibilities of error, due
to both computer malfunctions and operator mistakes." "Most germane to
this case, computerization greatly amplifies an error's effect, and
correspondingly intensifies the need for prompt correction; for inaccurate
data can infect not only one agency, but the many agencies that share
access to the database," she wrote.
In a particularly "conspicuous example," Justice Ginsburg said that the
computerized databases of the FBI's National Crime Information Center
(NCIC) contain over 23 million records, identifying, among other things,
persons and vehicles sought by law enforcement agencies nationwide.
"Thus," she wrote, "any mistake entered into the NCIC spreads nationwide
in an instant."
ACLU Free Reading Room | American Civil Liberties Union
gopher://aclu.org:6601 | 132 W. 43rd Street, NY, NY 10036
mailto:infoaclu@aclu.org| "Eternal vigilance is the
ftp://ftp.pipeline.com | price of liberty"
______________________________________________
> HIDDEN RAMPANT CENSORSHIP? STR FOCUS!
"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
MISGUIDED SENATORS TO AID
UNCONTROLLED CENSORSHIP?
The following has been confirmed:
A matter has come to my attention that is of the utmost importance to
all of us online. Simply put, a couple of senators have proposed a
particularly heinous piece of legislation titled the "Communications
Decency Act of 1995" (Senate Bill S. 314). Basically, the bill would
subject all forms of electronic communication -- from public Internet
postings to your most private email -- to government censorship. The
effects of the bill onto the online industry would be devastating -- most
colleges and private companies (AOL, Compuserve, etc.) would probably have
to shut down or greatly restrict access, since they would be held
criminally liable for the postings and email of private users.
Obviously, this bill is designed to win votes for these senators among
those who are fearful of the internet and aren't big fans of freedom of
speech -- ie., those who are always trying to censor "pornography" and
dirty books and such. Given the political climate in this country, this
bill might just pass unless the computer community demonstrates its
strength as a committed political force to be reckoned with. This, my
friends, is why I have filled your mailbox with this very long message.
A petition, to be sent to Congress, the President, and the media, has
begun spreading through the Internet. It's easy to participate and be
heard -- to sign it, you simply follow the instructions below -- which
boil down to sending a quick email message to a certain address. That's
all it takes to let your voice be heard. (You know, if the Internet makes
democracy this accessible to the average citizen, is it any wonder
Congress wants to censor it?)
Finally, PLEASE forward this message to all your friends online. The more
people sign the petition, the more the government will get the message to
back off the online community. We've been doing fine without censorship
until now -- let's show them we don't plan on allowing them to start now.
If you value your freedoms -- from your right to publicly post a message
on a worldwide forum to your right to receive private email without the
government censoring it -- you need to take action NOW. It'll take
fifteen minutes at the most, a small sacrifice considering the issues at
hand.
Remember, the age of fighting for liberty with muskets and shells is most
likely over; the time has come where the keyboard and the phone line will
prove mightier than the sword -- or the Senate, in this case.
PLEASE, WE NEED EACH OF OUR READERS TO DO THIS NOW....
Here's what you have to do to sign the petition:
send an e-mail message to:
S314-petition@netcom.com
The message (NOT the subject heading) should read as follows:
SIGNED <your online address>
<your full name> <U.S. Citizen> (y/n)
eg. SIGNED
lsewell@leland.Stanford.EDU Laura Sewell YES
______________________________________________________
> PNG SPEC STR Spotlight
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PNG (PORTABLE NETWORK GRAPHICS) SPECIFICATION, NINTH DRAFT
Revision date: 3 March, 1995
Permission is granted to reproduce this specification in complete
and unaltered form. Excerpts may be printed with the following
notice: "excerpted from the PNG (Portable Network Graphics)
specification, ninth draft." No notice is required in software that
follows this specification; notice is only required when reproducing
or excerpting from the specification itself.
Contents
* 0. Status
* 1. Introduction
* 2. Data Representation
* 3. File Structure
* 4. Standard Chunks
* 5. Deflate/inflate compression specification
* 6. Filter algorithms
* 7. Multi-image extension
* 8. Recommendations for encoders
* 9. Recommendations for decoders
* 10. Appendix: CRC pseudocode
* 11. Appendix: Rationale
* 12. Credits
0. Status
(This chapter will not be part of the finished Specification.)
This is the ninth draft of the PNG specification discussion document,
replacing all previous drafts. There are several significant changes
from the previous drafts.
CHANGES SINCE LAST DRAFT
* cHRM: Chromaticity chunk
* gAMA: Fixed (4 bytes)
* Extensive editing
* Filters chapter rewritten
* Line-by-line filter selection
* Adam5 interlacing in preference to GIF-style
* Gamma will remain ancillary
* Text chunks will be Latin-1
* New text keywords
* Compressed text support
* Pixel unit in oFFs chunk
* sBIT chunk added
* HEAD renamed IHDR, TAIL renamed IEND
* Time chunk is now modification time
FINALIZATION SCHEDULE
This is the final draft, barring necessary revisions stemming from the
reference implementation project. It is anticipated that a reference
implementation will be available by the end of March, after which all
changes made to the standard chunk set will be backward-compatible.
Changes made between now (3 March, 1995) and the release of the
reference implementation will be kept to a minimum. The reference
implementation will be freely usable in all applications, including
commercial applications.
1. Introduction
The PNG format is intended to provide a portable, legally
unencumbered, well-compressed, well-specified standard for lossless
bitmapped image files.
Although the initial motivation for developing PNG was to replace GIF,
the design provides some useful new features not available in GIF,
with minimal cost to developers.
GIF features retained in PNG include:
* Palette-mapped images of up to 256 colors.
* Streamability: files can be read and written strictly serially,
thus allowing the file format to be used as a communications
protocol for on-the-fly generation and display of images.
* Progressive display: a suitably prepared image file can be
displayed as it is received over a communications link, yielding a
low-resolution image very quickly with gradual improvement of
detail thereafter.
* Transparency: portions of the image can be marked as transparent,
allowing the effect of a nonrectangular image area to be achieved.
* Ancillary information: textual comments and other data can be
stored within the image file.
* Complete hardware and platform independence.
* Effective, 100% lossless compression.
Important new features of PNG, not available in GIF, include:
* Truecolor images of up to 48 bits per pixel.
* Grayscale images of up to 16 bits per pixel.
* Full alpha channel of 8 bits per pixel (general transparency
masks).
* Gamma (brightness) indication, allowing automatic brightness
adjustment.
* Early and straightforward detection of file corruption.
PNG is intended to be:
* Simple and portable: PNG should be widely implementable with
reasonably small effort for developers.
* Legally unencumbered: to the best of the knowledge of the PNG
authors, no algorithms under legal challenge were used.
* Well compressed: both palette-mapped and truecolor images are
compressed as effectively as in any other widely used lossless
format, and in most cases more ffectively.
* Interchangeable: any standard-conforming PNG file will be readable
by any PNG decoder.
* Flexible: the format allows for future extensions and private
add-ons, without compromising interchangeability more than
absolutely necessary.
* Robust: the design supports full file integrity checking as well
as simple, quick detection of common transmission errors.
The main part of this specification simply gives the definition of the
file format. An appendix gives the rationale for many design
decisions. Although the rationale is not part of the formal
specification, reading it may help implementors to understand the
design. Cross-references in the main text point to relevant parts of
the rationale.
See Rationale: Why a new file format?, Why these features?, Why not
these features?, Why not use format XYZ?.
PRONUNCIATION
PNG is pronounced "ping".
2. Data Representation
This chapter discusses basic data representations used in PNG files,
as well as the expected representation of the image data.
INTEGERS AND BYTE ORDER
All integers which require more than one byte will be in network byte
order, which is to say the most significant byte comes first, then the
less significant bytes in descending order of significance (MSB LSB
for two-byte integers, B3 B2 B1 B0 for four-byte integers). References
to bit 7 refer to the highest bit (value 128) of a byte; references to
bit 0 refer to the lowest bit (value 1) of a byte. Values are unsigned
unless otherwise noted. Values explicitly noted as signed are
represented in two's complement notation.
See Rationale: Byte order.
COLOR VALUES
All color values range from zero (representing black) to most intense
at the maximum value for the bit depth. Note that the maximum value at
a given bit depth is not 2^bitdepth, but rather (2^bitdepth)-1.
Intensity is not necessarily linear; the gAMA chunk specifies the
gamma response of the source device, and viewers are strongly
encouraged to properly compensate. See Gamma correction, below.
Source data with a precision not directly supported in PNG (for
example, 5 bit/sample truecolor) must be scaled up to the next higher
supported bit depth. Such scaling is reversible and hence incurs no
loss of data, while it reduces the number of cases that decoders must
cope with. See Recommendations for encoders: Bitdepth scaling.
IMAGE LAYOUT
PNG images are laid out as a rectangular pixel array, with pixels
appearing left-to-right within each scanline, and scanlines appearing
top-to-bottom. (For progressive disclosure purposes, the data may not
actually be transmitted in this order; see Interlaced data order.) The
size of each pixel is determined by the bit depth, which is the number
of bits per stored value in the image data.
Three types of pixel are supported:
* Palette-mapped pixels are represented by a single value that is an
index into a supplied palette. The bit depth determines the
maximum number of palette entries, not the color precision within
the palette.
* Grayscale pixels are represented by a single value that is a
grayscale level, where zero is black and the largest value for the
bit depth is white.
* Truecolor pixels are represented by three-value sequences: red
(zero = black, max = red) appears first, then green (zero = black,
max = green), then blue (zero = black, max = blue). The bit depth
specifies the size of each value, not the total pixel size.
In all cases, pixels are packed into scanlines consecutively, without
wasted space between pixels. (The allowable bit depths are restricted
so that the packing is simple and efficient.) When pixels are less
than 8 bits deep, they are packed into bytes with the leftmost pixel
in the high-order bits of a byte, the rightmost in the low-order bits.
However, scanlines always begin on byte boundaries. When pixels are
fewer than 8 bits deep, if the scanline width is not evenly divisible
by the number of pixels per byte then the low-order bits in the last
byte of each scanline are wasted. The contents of the padding bits
added to fill out the last byte of a scanline are unspecified.
An additional byte is added to the beginning of every scanline to
specify filtering, as discussed in more detail below. The filter byte
is not considered part of the image data, but it is included in the
data stream sent to the compression step.
ALPHA CHANNEL
An alpha channel, representing transparency levels on a per-pixel
basis, may be included in grayscale and truecolor PNG images.
An alpha channel value of 0 represents full transparency, and a value
of 255 represents a fully opaque pixel. Intermediate values indicate
partially transparent pixels that may be combined with a background
image to yield a composite image.
Alpha values are always represented by one byte per pixel, regardless
of the pixel bit depth. (Alpha channels may be included with images
that have either 8 or 16 bits per sample, but the alpha channel is 8
bits in either case.) The alpha value is stored immediately following
the grayscale or RGB values of the pixel.
The color stored for a pixel is not affected by the alpha value
assigned to the pixel. This rule is sometimes called "unassociated" or
"non pre-multiplied" alpha. (Another common technique is to store
pixel values premultiplied by the alpha fraction; in effect, the image
is already composited against a black background. PNG does not use
premultiplied alpha, since it precludes lossless storage.)
One other technique is available to provide transparency control
without the storage cost of a full alpha channel. In a palette image,
an alpha value may be associated with each palette entry. In grayscale
and truecolor PNG images without an alpha channel, a single pixel
value may be identified as being "transparent". These techniques are
controlled by the tRNS ancillary chunk type.
If no alpha channel nor tRNS chunk is present, all pixels in the image
are to be treated as fully opaque.
Viewers may support transparency control partially, or not at all. See
Recommendations for encoders: Alpha channel creation and
Recommendations for decoders: Alpha channel processing.
FILTERING
PNG allows the image data to be filtered before it is compressed. The
purpose of filtering is to improve the compressibility of the data.
The filter step itself does not reduce the size of the data. All PNG
filters are strictly lossless.
PNG defines several different filter algorithms, including "none"
which indicates no filtering. The filter algorithm is specified for
each scanline by a filter type byte which precedes the filtered
scanline in the compressed data. An intelligent encoder may switch
filters from one scanline to the next. The method for choosing which
filter to employ is up to the encoder.
See Rationale: Filtering.
INTERLACED DATA ORDER
A PNG image can be stored in interlaced order to allow progressive
disclosure. The purpose of this feature is to allow images to "fade
in" when they are being displayed on-the-fly. Interlacing slightly
expands the file size on average, but gives the user a meaningful
display more rapidly. Note that decoders are required to be able to
read interlaced images, whether or not they actually perform
progressive display.
With interlace type 0, pixels are stored sequentially from left to
right, and scanlines sequentially from top to bottom (no interlacing).
This order can be described by the following pseudocode, where the
"visit" function outputs the value at the specified row and column.
The other two arguments are the width and height in pixels of the area
to be filled during progressive display in order to produce a solid
display.
row = 0
while row < height begin
col = 0
while col < width
begin
visit (row, col, 1, 1)
col = col + 1
end
row = row + 1 end
Interlace type 1, known as Adam5 after its author, Adam M. Costello,
consists of five distinct passes over the image. The five passes are
described by the following pseudocode.
Again, the function visit() outputs a pixel at the specified row and
column, and the other two arguments are the width and height of the
rectangle to paint for a solid progressive display.
; Pass 1
row = 0
while row < height begin
col = 0
while col < width
begin
visit (row, col, 4, 4)
col = col + 4
end
row = row + 4 end
; Pass 2
row = 0
while row < height begin
col = 2
while col < width
begin
visit (row, col, 2, 4)
col = col + 4
end
row = row + 4 end
; Pass 3
row = 2
while row < height begin
col = 0
while col < width
begin
visit (row, col, 2, 2)
col = col + 2
end
row = row + 4 end
; Pass 4
row = 0
while row < height begin
col = 1
while col < width
begin
visit (row, col, 1, 2)
col = col + 2
end
row = row + 2 end
; Pass 5
row = 1
while row < height begin
col = 0
while col < width
begin
visit (row, col, 1, 1)
col = col + 1
end
row = row + 2 end
Important note: each row of each pass should be regarded as a scanline
for all purposes, specifically filtering and image layout.
GAMMA CORRECTION
Gamma is a way of defining the brightness reproduction curve of a
camera or display device. When brightness levels are expressed as
fractions in the range 0 to 1, such a device produces an output
brightness level obright from an input brightness level bright
according to the equation
obright = bright ^ gamma
PNG images may specify the gamma of the camera (or simulated camera)
that produced the image, and thus the gamma of the image with respect
to the original scene. To get accurate tone reproduction, the gamma of
the display device and the gamma of the image file should be
reciprocals of each other, since the overall gamma of the system is
the product of the gammas of each component. So, for example, if an
image with a gamma of 0.4 is displayed on a CRT with a gamma of 2.5,
the overall gamma of the system is 1.0. An overall gamma of 1.0 gives
correct tone reproduction.
In practice, images of gamma around 1.0 and gamma around 0.45 are both
widely found. PNG expects encoders to record the gamma if known, and
it expects decoders to correct the image gamma if necessary for proper
display on their display hardware. Failure to correct for image gamma
leads to a too-dark or too-light display.
See Rationale: Why gamma correction?, Recommendations for encoders:
Encoder gamma handling, and Recommendations for decoders: Decoder
gamma handling.
TEXT STRINGS
A PNG file can store text associated with the image, such as an image
description or copyright notice. Keywords are used to indicate what
each text string represents.
ISO 8859-1 (Latin-1) is the character set recommended for use in text
strings. This character set is a superset of 7-bit ASCII.
Provision is also made for the storage of compressed text.
See Rationale: Text strings.
3. File Structure
A PNG file consists of a PNG signature followed by a series of chunks.
This chapter defines the signature and the basic properties of chunks.
Individual chunk types are discussed in the next chapter.
PNG FILE SIGNATURE
The first eight bytes of a PNG file always contain the following
(decimal) values:
137 80 78 71 13 10 26 10
This signature indicates that the remainder of the file contains a
single PNG image, consisting of a series of chunks beginning with an
IHDR chunk and ending with a IEND chunk.
See Rationale: PNG file signature.
CHUNK LAYOUT
Each chunk consists of four parts:
Length
A 4-byte unsigned integer giving the number of bytes in the
chunk's data field. The length counts only the data field, not
itself, the chunk type code, or the CRC. Zero is a valid
length. Although encoders and decoders should treat the length
as unsigned, its value may not exceed (2^31)-1 bytes.
Chunk Type
A 4-byte chunk type code. For convenience in description and in
examining PNG files, type codes are restricted to consist of
uppercase and lowercase ASCII letters (A-Z, a-z). However,
encoders and decoders should treat the codes as fixed binary
values, not character strings. For example, it would not be
correct to represent the type code IDAT by the EBCDIC
equivalents of those letters. Additional naming conventions for
chunk types are discussed in the next section.
Chunk Data
The data bytes appropriate to the chunk type, if any. This
field may be of zero length.
CRC
A 4-byte CRC (Cyclical Redundancy Check) calculated on the
preceding bytes in that chunk, including the chunk type code
and chunk data fields, but not including the length field. The
CRC is always present, even for empty chunks such as IEND. The
CRC algorithm is specified below.
The chunk data length may be any number of bytes up to the maximum;
therefore, implementors may not assume that chunks are aligned on any
boundaries larger than bytes.
Chunks may appear in any order, subject to the restrictions placed on
each chunk type. (One notable restriction is that IHDR must appear
first and IEND must appear last; thus the IEND chunk serves as an
end-of-file marker.) Multiple chunks of the same type may appear, but
only if specifically permitted for that type.
See Rationale: Chunk layout.
CHUNK NAMING CONVENTIONS
Chunk type codes are assigned in such a way that a decoder can
determine some properties of a chunk even if it does not recognize the
type code. These rules are intended to allow safe, flexible extension
of the PNG format, by allowing a decoder to decide what to do when it
encounters an unknown chunk. The naming rules are not normally of
interest when a decoder does recognize the chunk's type.
Four bits of the type code, namely bit 5 (value 32) of each byte, are
used to convey chunk properties. This choice means that a human can
read off the assigned properties according to whether each letter of
the type code is uppercase (bit 5 is 0) or lower case (bit 5 is 1).
However, decoders should test the properties of an unknown chunk by
numerically testing the specified bits; testing whether a character is
upper or lower case is inefficient, and even incorrect if a
locale-specific case definition is used.
It is also worth noting that the property bits are an inherent part of
the chunk name, and hence are fixed for any chunk type. Thus, TEXT and
Text are completely unrelated chunk type codes. Decoders should
recognize codes by simple four-byte literal comparison; it is
incorrect to perform case conversion on type codes.
The significance of the property bits is as follows:
First Byte: 0 (uppercase) = critical, 1 (lower case) = ancillary
Chunks which are not strictly necessary in order to
meaningfully display the contents of the file are known as
"ancillary" chunks. Decoders encountering an unknown chunk in
which the ancillary bit is 1 may safely ignore the chunk and
proceed to display the image. The offset chunk (oFFs) is an
example of an ancillary chunk.
Chunks which are critical to the successful display of the
file's contents are called "critical" chunks. Decoders
encountering an unknown chunk in which the ancillary bit is 0
must indicate to the user that the image contains information
they cannot safely interpret. The image header chunk (IHDR) is
an example of a critical chunk.
Second Byte: 0 (uppercase) = public, 1 (lower case) = private
If the chunk is public (part of this specification or a later
edition of this specification), its second letter is uppercase.
If your application requires proprietary chunks, and you have
no interest in seeing the software of other vendors recognize
them, use a lowercase second letter in the chunk name. Such
names will never be assigned in the official specification.
Note that there is no need for software to test this property
bit; it simply ensures that private and public chunk names will
not conflict.
Third Byte: reserved, must be 0 (uppercase) always
The significance of the case of the third letter of the chunk
name is reserved for possible future expansion. At the present
time all chunk names must have uppercase third letters.
Fourth Byte: 0 (uppercase) = unsafe to copy, 1 (lower case) = safe to
copy
This property bit is not of interest to pure decoders, but it
is needed by programs that modify a PNG file.
If a chunk's safe-to-copy bit is 1, the chunk may be copied to
a modified PNG file whether or not the software recognizes the
chunk type, and regardless of the extent of the file
modifications.
If a chunk's safe-to-copy bit is 0, it indicates that the chunk
depends on the image data. If the program has made any changes
to critical chunks, including addition of, modification of, or
deletion of critical chunks, then unrecognized unsafe chunks
must not be copied to the output PNG file. (Of course, if the
program does recognize the chunk, it may choose to output an
appropriately modified version.)
A PNG file modifier is always allowed to copy all unrecognized
chunks if it has only added, deleted, or modified ancillary
chunks. This implies that it is not permissible to make
ancillary chunks that depend on other ancillary chunks.
PNG file modifiers which do not recognize a critical chunk
should report an error and refuse to process that PNG file at
all. The safe/unsafe mechanism is intended for use with
ancillary chunks. The safe-to-copy bit will always be 0 for
critical chunks.
See Rationale: Chunk naming conventions.
CRC ALGORITHM
Chunk CRCs are calculated using standard CRC methods. The CRC
polynomial employed is as follows:
x^32+x^26+x^23+x^22+x^16+x^12+x^11+x^10+x^8+x^7+x^5+x^4+x^2+x+1
CRC computation is not difficult, nor as computationally intensive as
the above may suggest. See Appendix: CRC pseudocode.
4. Standard Chunks
This chapter presents the standard types of PNG chunks.
CRITICAL CHUNKS
All implementations must understand and successfully render the
standard critical chunks. A valid PNG image must contain an IHDR
chunk, one or more IDAT chunks, and an IEND chunk.
IHDR Image Header
This chunk must appear FIRST. Its contents are:
Width: 4 bytes
Height: 4 bytes
Bit depth: 1 byte
Color type: 1 byte
Compression type: 1 byte
Filter type: 1 byte
Interlace type: 1 byte
Width and height give the image dimensions in pixels. They are 4-byte
integers. Zero is an invalid value. The maximum for each is
(2^31)-1 in order to accommodate languages which have
difficulty with unsigned 4-byte values.
Bit depth is a single-byte integer giving the number of bits
per pixel (for palette images) or per sample (for grayscale and
truecolor images). Valid values are 1, 2, 4, 8, and 16,
although not all values are allowed for all color types.
Color type is a single-byte integer that describes the
interpretation of the image data. Color type values represent
sums of the following values: 1 (palette used), 2 (color used),
and 4 (full alpha used). Valid values are 0, 2, 3, 4, and 6.
Bit depth restrictions for each color type are imposed both to
simplify implementations and to prohibit certain combinations
that do not compress well in practice. Decoders must support
all legal combinations of bit depth and color type. (Note that
bit depths of 16 are easily supported on 8-bit display hardware
by dropping the least significant byte.)
Color Allowed Interpretation
Type Bit Depths
0 1,2,4,8,16 Each pixel value is a grayscale level.
2 8,16 Each pixel value is an R,G,B series.
3 1,2,4,8 Each pixel value is a palette index;
a PLTE chunk must appear.
4 8,16 Each pixel value is a grayscale level,
followed by an alpha channel byte.
6 8,16 Each pixel value is an R,G,B series,
followed by an alpha channel byte.
Note that an alpha channel, where present, is always represented by
one byte per pixel, even when the bit depth is 16.
Compression type is a single-byte integer that indicates the
method used to compress the image data. Compression methods are
defined in a later chapter. At present, only compression type 0
(inflate/deflate compression with a 32K sliding window) is
defined. All standard PNG images must be compressed
with this
scheme. The compression type code is provided for possible
future expansion or proprietary variants. Decoders must check
this byte and report an error if it holds an unrecognized code.
Filter type is a single-byte integer that indicates the
preprocessing method applied to the image data before
compression. Filtering methods are defined in a later chapter.
At present, only filter type 0 (adaptive filtering with five
basic filter types) is defined. As with the compression type
code, decoders must check this byte and report an error if it
holds an unrecognized code. See Filter algorithms for details.
Interlace type is a single-byte integer that indicates the
transmission order of the pixel data. Two values are currently
defined: 0 (no interlace) or 1 (Adam5 interlace). See
Interlaced data order for details.
PLTE Palette
This chunk's contents are from 1 to 256 palette entries, each a
three-byte series of the form:
red: 1 byte (0 = black, 255 = red)
green: 1 byte (0 = black, 255 = green)
blue: 1 byte (0 = black, 255 = blue)
The number of entries is determined from the chunk length. A chunk
length not divisible by 3 is an error.
This chunk must appear for color type 3, and may appear for
color types 2 and 6. If this chunk does appear, it must precede
the first IDAT chunk.
For color type 3 (palette data), the PLTE chunk is required.
The first entry in PLTE is referenced by pixel value 0, the
second by pixel value 1, etc. The number of palette entries
must not exceed the range that can be represented by the bit
depth (for example, 2^4 = 16 for a bit depth of 4). It is
permissible to have fewer entries than the bit depth would
allow. In that case, any out-of-range pixel value found in the
image data is an error.
For color types 2 and 6 (truecolor), the PLTE chunk is
optional. If present, it provides a recommended set of from 1
to 256 colors to which the truecolor image may be quantized if
the viewer cannot display truecolor directly. If PLTE is not
present, such a viewer must select colors on its own, but it is
often preferable for this to be done once by the encoder.
Note that the palette uses 8 bits (1 byte) per value regardless
of the image bit depth specification. In particular, the
palette is 8 bits deep even when it is a suggested quantization
of a 16-bit truecolor image.
IDAT Image Data
This chunk contains image data. The data has been filtered and
compressed according to the filter type and compression method
specified by the IHDR chunk.
There may be multiple IDAT chunks; if so, they must appear
consecutively with no other intervening chunks. The compressed
data stream is the concatenation of the contents of all the
IDAT chunks. The encoder may divide the compressed data stream
into chunks as it wishes; chunk boundaries have no semantic
significance. (Multiple IDAT chunks are allowed so that
encoders can work in a fixed amount of memory; typically the
chunk size will correspond to the encoder's buffer size.)
IEND Image Trailer
This chunk must appear LAST. It marks the end of the PNG data
stream. The chunk's data field is empty.
ANCILLARY CHUNKS
All ancillary chunks are optional, in the sense that encoders need not
write them and decoders may ignore them. However, encoders are
encouraged to write the standard ancillary chunks when the information
is available, and decoders are encouraged to interpret these chunks
when appropriate and feasible.
gAMA Gamma Correction
This chunk's contents are:
Image gamma value: 4 bytes
The gamma correction chunk specifies the gamma of the camera (or
simulated camera) that produced the image, and thus the gamma
of the image with respect to the original scene. Note that this
is not the same as the gamma of the display device that will
reproduce the image correctly.
A value of 100000 represents a gamma of 1.0, a value of 45000 a
gamma of 0.45, and so on (divide by 100000.0). Values around
1.0 and around 0.45 are common in practice.
If the encoder does not know the gamma value, it should not
write a gamma chunk; the absence of a gamma chunk indicates the
gamma is unknown.
If the gamma chunk does appear, it must precede the first IDAT
chunk, and it must also precede the PLTE chunk if present.
See Gamma correction.
sBIT Significant Bits
To simplify decoders, PNG specifies that only certain bit depth
values be used, and further specifies that values stored must
be scaled to the full range of possible values at that bit
depth. However, the sBIT chunk is provided in order to store
the original number of significant bits.
For color type 0 (grayscale), the sBIT chunk contains a single
byte, indicating the number of bits which were significant in
the source data.
For color type 2 (RGB truecolor), the sBIT chunk contains three
bytes, indicating the number of bits which were significant in
the source data for the red, green, and blue channels,
respectively.
For color type 3 (palette color), the sBIT chunk contains three
bytes, indicating the number of bits which were significant in
the source data for the red, green and blue components of the
palette entries, respectively.
For color type 4 (grayscale with alpha channel), the sBIT chunk
contains two bytes, indicating the number of bits which were
significant in the source grayscale data and the source alpha
channel data, respectively.
For color type 6 (RGB truecolor with alpha channel), the sBIT
chunk contains four bytes, indicating the number of bits which
were significant in the source data for the red, green, blue
and alpha channels, respectively.
If the sBIT chunk does appear, it must precede the first IDAT
chunk, and it must also precede the PLTE chunk if present.
cHRM Primary Chromaticities and White Point
Applications that need more precise specification of colors in
a PNG file may use this chunk to specify the chromaticities of
the red, green, and blue primaries used in the image, and the
referenced white point. These values are based in the 1931 CIE
(International Color Committee) XYZ diagram. Only the
chromaticities (X and Y) are specified.
The chunk stores eight values, each encoded as a 4-byte
integer, representing the X or Y value times 100000. They are
stored in the order White Point X, White Point Y, Red X, Red Y,
Green X, Green Y, Blue X, Blue Y.
The cHRM chunk must appear precede the PLTE and IDAT chunks.
tRNS Transparency
Transparency is an alternative to the full alpha channel.
Although transparency is not as elegant as the full alpha
channel, it requires less storage space and is sufficient for
many common cases.
For color type 3 (palette), this chunk's contents are a series
of alpha channel bytes, corresponding to palette indexes in the
PLTE chunk. Each entry indicates that pixels of that palette
index should be treated as having the specified alpha value.
Alpha values have the same interpretation as in the full alpha
channel: 0 is fully transparent, 255 is fully opaque,
regardless of image bit depth. The tRNS chunk may contain fewer
alpha channel bytes than there are palette entries. In this
case, the alpha channel value for all remaining palette entries
is assumed to be 255. In the common case where only palette
index 0 need be made transparent, only a one-byte tRNS chunk is
needed. The tRNS chunk may not contain more bytes than there
are palette entries.
For color type 0 (grayscale), the tRNS chunk contains a single
gray level value, stored in the format
gray: 2 bytes, range 0 .. (2^bitdepth) - 1
(For consistency, 2 bytes are used regardless of the image bit depth.)
Pixels of the specified gray level are to be treated as
transparent (equivalent to alpha value 0); all other pixels are
to be treated as fully opaque (alpha value 255).
For color type 2 (RGB), the tRNS chunk contains a single RGB
color value, stored in the format
red: 2 bytes, range 0 .. (2^bitdepth) - 1
green: 2 bytes, range 0 .. (2^bitdepth) - 1
blue: 2 bytes, range 0 .. (2^bitdepth) - 1
(For consistency, 2 bytes per sample are used regardless of the image
bit depth.) Pixels of the specified color value are to be
treated as transparent (equivalent to alpha value 0); all other
pixels are to be treated as fully opaque (alpha value 255).
tRNS is prohibited for color types 4 and 6, since a full alpha
channel is already present in those cases.
When present, the tRNS chunk must precede the first IDAT chunk,
and must follow the PLTE chunk, if any.
bKGD Background Color
This chunk specifies a default background color against which
the image may be presented. Note that viewers are not bound to
honor this chunk; a viewer may choose to use a different
background color.
For color type 3 (palette), the bKGD chunk contains:
palette index: 1 byte
The value is the palette index of the color to be used as background.
For color types 0 and 4 (grayscale, with or without alpha),
bKGD contains:
gray: 2 bytes, range 0 .. (2^bitdepth) - 1
(For consistency, 2 bytes are used regardless of the image bit depth.)
The value is the gray level to be used as background.
For color types 2 and 6 (RGB, with or without alpha), bKGD
contains:
red: 2 bytes, range 0 .. (2^bitdepth) - 1
green: 2 bytes, range 0 .. (2^bitdepth) - 1
blue: 2 bytes, range 0 .. (2^bitdepth) - 1
(For consistency, 2 bytes per sample are used regardless of the image
bit depth.) This is the RGB color to be used as background.
When present, the bKGD chunk must precede the first IDAT chunk,
and must follow the PLTE chunk, if any.
See Recommendations for decoders: Background color.
hIST Image Histogram
The histogram chunk gives the approximate usage frequency of
each color in the color palette. A histogram chunk may appear
only when a palette chunk appears. If a viewer is unable to
provide all the colors listed in the palette, the histogram may
help it decide how to choose a subset of the colors for
display.
This chunk's contents are a series of 2-byte (16 bit) unsigned
integers. There must be exactly one entry for each entry in the
PLTE chunk. Each entry is approximately equal to the number of
pixels with that palette index, multiplied by 65535, and
divided by the total number of pixels, rounding up.
Histogram entries are approximate, with the exception that a
zero entry specifies that the corresponding palette entry is
not used at all in the image. It is required that a histogram
entry be nonzero if there are any pixels of that color.
When the palette is a suggested quantization of a truecolor
image, the histogram is necessarily approximate, since a
decoder may map pixels to palette entries differently than the
encoder did. In this situation, zero entries should not appear.
The hIST chunk, if it appears, must follow the PLTE chunk, and
must precede the first IDAT chunk.
See Rationale: Palette histograms, and Recommendations for
decoders: Palette histogram usage.
tEXt Textual Data
A tEXt chunk contains a keyword followed by a text string. The
keyword and text string are separated by a zero byte (null
character). Neither the keyword nor the string may contain a
null character. Note that the text string is not
null-terminated (the length of the chunk is sufficient
information to locate the ending). Both keyword and text are
interpreted according to the ISO 8859-1 (Latin-1) character
set. Newlines in the text string should be represented by a
single linefeed character (decimal 10); use of other ASCII
control characters is discouraged. Nulls (decimal 0) are not
permitted inside the keyword or the text.
Any number of tEXt chunks may appear, and more than one with
the same keyword is permissible.
The keyword indicates the type of information represented by
the string. The following keywords are predefined and should be
used where appropriate:
Title Short title or caption for image
Author Name of image's creator
Copyright Copyright notice
Description Description of image (possibly long)
Software Software used to create the image
Disclaimer Legal disclaimer
Warning Warning of nature of content
Source Device used to create the image
Comment Miscellaneous comment; conversion from GIF comment
Other keywords, containing any sequence of printable characters in the
character set, may be invented for other purposes. Keywords of
general interest may be registered with the maintainers of the
PNG specification.
Keywords must be spelled exactly as registered, so that
decoders may use simple literal comparisons when looking for
particular keywords. In particular, keywords are considered
case-sensitive.
See Recommendations for encoders: Text chunk processing and
Recommendations for decoders: Text chunk processing.
zTXt Compressed Textual Data
A zTXt chunk contains textual data, just as tEXt does; however,
zTXt takes advantage of compression.
A zTXt chunk consists of an uncompressed Latin-1 keyword
followed by a null (0) character, analogous to the tEXt chunk.
The next byte after the null contains a compression type byte,
for which the only legitimate value is presently zero
(inflate/deflate compression). The compression-type byte is
followed by a compressed Latin-1 text data stream which makes
up the remainder of the chunk.
Any number of zTXt and tEXt chunks may appear in the same file.
See the preceding definition of the tEXt chunk for the
allowable keywords and the exact format of the text.
See Recommendations for encoders: Text chunk processing and
Recommendations for decoders: Text chunk processing.
pHYs Physical Pixel Dimensions
This chunk's contents are:
4 bytes: units per pixel, X axis (unsigned integer)
4 bytes: units per pixel, Y axis (unsigned integer)
1 byte: unit specifier
The following values are legal for the unit specifier:
0: unit is unknown (aspect ratio only)
1: unit is the micrometer (also known as the micron; 1/1,000,000th of a
meter)
Conversion note: one inch is equal to exactly 25,400 micrometers by
definition.
If this ancillary chunk is not present, pixels are assumed to
be square, and the physical size of each pixel is unknown.
If present, this chunk must precede the first IDAT chunk.
See Recommendations for decoders: Pixel dimensions.
oFFs Physical Image Offset
This chunk's contents are:
4 bytes: image position on the page, X axis: signed integer
4 bytes: image position on the page, Y axis: signed integer
1 byte: unit specifier
Both position values are signed. The following values are legal for
the unit specifier:
0: unit is the pixel (true dimensions unknown)
1: unit is the micrometer (also known as the micron; 1/1,000,000th of a
meter)
Conversion note: one inch is equal to exactly 25,400 micrometers by
definition.
This chunk gives the position on a printed page at which the
image should be output when printed alone. The X position is
measured rightwards from the left side of the page to the left
side of the image; the Y position is measured downwards from
the top side of the page to the top of the image.
If present, this chunk must precede the first IDAT chunk.
tIME Image Last-Modification Time
This chunk's contents are:
2 bytes: Year (complete; for example, 1995)
1 byte: Month (1-12)
1 byte: Day (1-31)
1 byte: Hour (0-23)
1 byte: Minute (0-59)
1 byte: Second (0-61)
This chunk gives the time of the last image modification. Universal
Time (UTC, also called GMT) should be specified rather than
local time.
SUMMARY OF STANDARD CHUNKS
This table summarizes some properties of the standard chunk types.
Name Multiple Ordering constraints
OK?
IHDR No Must be first
PLTE No Before IDAT
IDAT Yes Multiple IDATs must be consecutive
IEND No Must be last
gAMA No Before PLTE, IDAT
sBIT No Before PLTE, IDAT
cHRM No Before PLTE, IDAT
tRNS No After PLTE; before IDAT
bKGD No After PLTE; before IDAT
hIST No After PLTE; before IDAT
tEXt Yes
zTXt Yes
pHYs No Before IDAT
oFFs No Before IDAT
tIME No
Standard keywords for tEXt and zTXt chunks:
Title Short title or caption for image
Author Name of image's creator
Copyright Copyright notice
Description Description of image (possibly long)
Software Software used to create the image
Disclaimer Legal disclaimer
Warning Warning of nature of content
Source Device used to create the image
Comment Miscellaneous comment; conversion from GIF comment
5. Deflate/inflate compression specification
This draft proposes use of the inflate/deflate compression scheme, an
LZ77 derivative which is used in zip, gzip, pkzip and related
programs, because extensive research has been done supporting its
patent-free status. Inflate and deflate code is available in the
zip/unzip packages with a very permissive license (yes, permissive
enough for commercial purposes, see those packages for details).
A formal, detailed specification of inflate and deflate will be
included in the final standard, and is being written at this time. The
current draft of the inflate/deflate specification is now available by
anonymous FTP from ftp.cs.wisc.edu in the directory
pub/ghost/gzip-doc. The compressed data stream will be stored in the
Ziplib format, the specification of which has been written and will be
referenced shortly.
6. Filter algorithms
This chapter describes the pixel filtering algorithms which may be
applied in advance of compression. The purpose of these filters is to
prepare the image data for optimum compression.
PNG defines five basic filtering algorithms, which are given numeric
codes as follows:
Code Name
0 None
1 Sub
2 Up
3 Average
4 Paeth
The encoder may choose which algorithm to apply on a
scanline-by-scanline basis. In the image data sent to the compression
step, each scanline is preceded by a filter type byte containing the
numeric code of the filter algorithm used for that scanline.
Filtering algorithms are applied to bytes, not to pixels, regardless
of the bit depth or color type of the image. The filtering algorithms
work on the byte sequence formed by a scanline that has been
represented as described previously (Image layout).
When the image is interlaced, each pass of the interlace pattern is
treated as an independent image for filtering purposes. The filters
work on the byte sequences formed by the pixels actually transmitted
during a pass, and the "previous scanline" is the one previously
transmitted in the same pass, not the one adjacent in the complete
image. Note that the subimage transmitted in any one pass is always
rectangular, but is of smaller width and height than the complete
image.
For all filters, the bytes "to the left of" the first pixel in a
scanline must be treated as being zero. For filters that refer to the
prior scanline, the entire prior scanline must be treated as being
zeroes for the first scanline of an image (or of a pass of an
interlaced image).
To reverse the effect of a filter, the decoder must use the decoded
values of the prior pixel on the same line, the pixel immediately
above the current pixel on the prior line, and the pixel just to the
left of the pixel above. This implies that at least one scanline's
worth of image data must be stored by the decoder at all times. Note
that although some filter types do not refer to the prior scanline,
the decoder must always store each scanline as it is decoded, since
the next scanline might use a filter that refers to it.
PNG imposes no restriction on which filter types may be applied to an
image. However, the filters are not equally effective on all types of
data. See Recommendations for encoders: Filter selection.
See also Rationale: Filtering.
FILTER TYPE 0: NONE
With the None filter, the scanline is transmitted unmodified; it is
only necessary to insert a filter type byte before the data.
FILTER TYPE 1: SUB
The Sub filter transmits the difference between each byte and the
value of the corresponding byte of the prior pixel.
Apply the following formula to each byte of each scanline, where x
ranges from zero to the number of bytes representing that scanline
minus one (1), and Raw(x) refers to the raw data byte at that byte
position in the scanline:
Sub(x) = Raw(x) - Raw(x-bpp)
Note this is done for each byte, regardless of bit depth. Unsigned
arithmetic modulo 256 is used, so that both the inputs and outputs fit
into bytes. The sequence of Sub values is transmitted as the filtered
scanline.
bpp is defined as the number of bytes per complete pixel, rounding up
to one (1). For instance, for color type 2 with a bit depth of 16, bpp
is equal to 6 (three channels, two bytes per channel); for color type
0 with a bit depth of 2, bpp is equal to 1 (rounding up); for color
type 4 with a bit depth of 16, bpp is equal to 3 (two-byte grayscale
value, plus one-byte alpha channel).
Important: for all x < 0, assume Raw(x) = 0.
To reverse the effect of the Sub filter after decompression, output
the following value:
Sub(x) + Raw(x-bpp)
(computed mod 256), where Raw refers to the bytes already decoded.
FILTER TYPE 2: UP
The Up filter is just like the Sub filter except that the pixel
immediately above the current pixel, rather than just to its left, is
used as the predictor.
Apply the following formula to each byte of each scanline, where x
ranges from zero to the number of bytes representing that scanline
minus one (1), and Raw(x) refers to the raw data byte at that byte
position in the scanline:
Up(x) = Raw(x) - Prior(x)
where Prior refers to the unfiltered bytes of the prior scanline.
Note this is done for each byte, regardless of bit depth. Unsigned
arithmetic modulo 256 is used, so that both the inputs and outputs fit
into bytes. The sequence of Up values is transmitted as the filtered
scanline.
Important: on the first scanline of an image (or of a pass of an
interlaced image), assume Prior(x) = 0 for all x.
To reverse the effect of the Up filter after decompression, output the
following value:
Up(x) + Prior(x)
(computed mod 256), where Prior refers to the decoded bytes of the
prior scanline.
FILTER TYPE 3: AVERAGE
The Average filter uses the average of the two neighboring pixels
(left and above) to predict the value of a pixel.
Apply the following formula to each byte of each scanline, where x
ranges from zero to the number of bytes representing that scanline
minus one (1), and Raw(x) refers to the raw data byte at that byte
position in the scanline:
Average(x) = Raw(x) - floor((Raw(x-bpp)+Prior(x))/2)
where Prior refers to the unfiltered bytes of the prior scanline, and
bpp is defined as for the Sub filter.
Note this is done for each byte, regardless of bit depth. The sequence
of Average values is transmitted as the filtered scanline.
The subtraction of the predicted value from the raw byte must be done
modulo 256, so that both the inputs and outputs fit into bytes.
However, the sum Raw(x-bpp)+Prior(x) must be formed without overflow
(using at least nine-bit arithmetic). floor() indicates that the
result of the division is rounded to the next lower integer if
fractional; in other words, it is an integer division or right shift
operation.
Important: for all x < 0, assume Raw(x) = 0. On the first scanline of
an image (or of a pass of an interlaced image), assume Prior(x) = 0
for all x.
To reverse the effect of the Average filter after decompression,
output the following value:
Average(x) + floor((Raw(x-bpp)+Prior(x))/2)
where the result is computed mod 256, but the prediction is calculated
in the same way as for encoding. Raw refers to the bytes already
decoded, and Prior refers to the decoded bytes of the prior scanline.
FILTER TYPE 4: PAETH
The Paeth filter computes a simple linear function of the three
neighboring pixels (left, above, upper left), then chooses as
predictor the neighboring pixel closest to the computed value. This
technique is taken from Alan W. Paeth's article "Image File
Compression Made Easy" in Graphics Gems II, James Arvo, editor,
Academic Press, 1991.
Apply the following formula to each byte of each scanline, where x
ranges from zero to the number of bytes representing that scanline
minus one (1), and Raw(x) refers to the raw data byte at that byte
position in the scanline:
Paeth(x) = Raw(x) - PaethPredictor(Raw(x-bpp),Prior(x),Prior(x-bpp))
where Prior refers to the unfiltered bytes of the prior scanline, and
bpp is defined as for the Sub filter.
Note this is done for each byte, regardless of bit depth. Unsigned
arithmetic modulo 256 is used, so that both the inputs and outputs fit
into bytes. The sequence of Paeth values is transmitted as the
filtered scanline.
The PaethPredictor function is defined by the following pseudocode.
Note that the order in which ties are broken is fixed and must not be
altered. The order is: pixel to the left, pixel above, pixel to the
upper left.
function PaethPredictor (a, b, c)
begin
; a = left, b = above, c = upper left
p = a + b - c ; initial estimate
pa = abs(p - a) ; distances to a, b, c
pb = abs(p - b)
pc = abs(p - c)
; return nearest of a,b,c,
; breaking ties in order a,b,c.
if pa <= pb AND pa <= pc
begin
return a
end
if pb <= pc
begin
return b
end
return c
end
Note that non-overflowing integer arithmetic is required for the
calculations within the PaethPredictor function; arithmetic modulo 256
is to be used only for the final step of subtracting the function
result from the target pixel value. (Also note that the tie break
order differs from that given in Paeth's article.)
Important: for all x < 0, assume Raw(x) = 0 and Prior(x) = 0. On the
first scanline of an image (or of a pass of an interlaced image),
assume Prior(x) = 0 for all x.
To reverse the effect of the Paeth filter after decompression, output
the following value:
Paeth(x) + PaethPredictor(Raw(x-bpp),Prior(x),Prior(x-bpp))
(computed mod 256), where Raw and Prior refer to bytes already
decoded. Exactly the same PaethPredictor function is used by both
encoder and decoder.
7. Multi-image extension
PNG itself is strictly a single-image format. However, it may be
necessary to store multiple images within one file; for example, this
is needed to convert some GIF files. For this purpose, a multi-image
format will be defined in the near future. PNG decoders will not be
required to support the multi-image extension.
8. Recommendations for encoders
This chapter gives some recommendations for encoder behavior. The only
absolute requirement on a PNG encoder is that it produce files which
conform to the format specified in the preceding chapters. However,
best results will usually be achieved by following these
recommendations.
REGISTERING PROPRIETARY CHUNKS
If you want others outside your organization to understand a chunk
type that you invent, contact the editor of the PNG specification
(boutell@netcom.com) and specify the format of the chunk's data and
your preferred chunk type name. The authors will assign a permanent,
unique chunk type name. The chunk type will be publicly listed in an
appendix of extended chunk types which can be optionally implemented.
Note that the creation of new critical chunk types is discouraged
unless absolutely necessary. This process will begin as soon as the
basic specification is finalized. In the event that Mr. Boutell is
unable to maintain the specification, the task will be passed on to a
qualified volunteer or organization.
New proprietary chunks will be only be registered if they are of use
to others and do not violate the design philosophy of PNG. Chunk
registration is not automatic, although it is the intent of the
authors that it be straightforward when a new chunk of potentially
wide application in one or several fields is needed.
If you do not require or desire that others outside your organization
understand the chunk type, you may use a private chunk name by
specifying a lowercase letter for the second character.
Please note that if you want to use a private chunk for information
that is not essential to view the image, and have any desire
whatsoever that others not using your internal viewer software be able
to view the image, you should use an ancillary chunk type (first
character is lowercase) rather than a critical chunk type (first
character uppercase).
Also note that others may use the same private chunk name, so it is
advantageous to keep additional identifying information at the
beginning of the chunk data.
If an ancillary chunk is to contain textual information that might be
of interest to a human user, it is recommended that a special chunk
type not be used. Instead use a tEXt chunk and define a suitable
keyword. In this way, the information will be available to users not
using your software.
New keywords for tEXt chunks may be registered with the maintainers of
the PNG specification. Keywords should be reasonably self-explanatory.
BITDEPTH SCALING
When scaling input values with a bit depth that cannot be directly
represented in PNG, an excellent approximation to the correct value
can be achieved by shifting the valid bits to begin in the most
significant bit and repeating the most significant bits into the open
bits.
For example, if 5 bits per channel are available in the source data,
conversion to a bitdepth of 8 can be achieved as follows.
If the value for a sample in the source data is 27 (in a range from
0-31), then the original bits are:
4 3 2 1 0 ---------
1 1 0 1 1
Converted to a bitdepth of 8, the best value is 222:
7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 ----------------
1 1 0 1 1 1 1 0
|=======| |===|
| Leftmost Bits Repeated to Fill Open Bits
|
Original Bits
Note that this scaling can be reversed simply by shifting right.
Scaling by simply shifting left by three bits is incorrect, since the
resulting data would have a range less than the desired full range
(continuing the example, 248 = 11111000 is not full brightness).
ENCODER GAMMA HANDLING
If it is possible for the encoder to determine the image gamma, or to
make a strong guess based on the hardware on which it runs, then the
encoder is strongly encouraged to output the gAMA chunk.
A linear brightness level, expressed as a floating-point value in the
range 0 to 1, may be converted to a gamma-corrected pixel value by
gbright = bright ^ gamma
pixelval = ROUND(gbright * MAXPIXVAL)
Computer graphics renderers often do not perform gamma encoding,
instead making pixel values directly proportional to scene brightness.
This "linear" pixel encoding is equivalent to gamma encoding with a
gamma of 1.0, so graphics programs that produce linear pixels should
always put out a gAMA chunk specifying a gamma of 1.0.
It is not recommended that encoders attempt to convert supplied images
to a different gamma. Store the data in the file without conversion,
and record the source gamma. Gamma conversion at encode time is a bad
idea because gamma adjustment of digital pixel data is inherently
lossy, due to roundoff error (8 or so bits is not really enough
accuracy). Thus encode-time conversion permanently degrades the image.
Worse, if the eventual decoder wants the data with some other gamma,
then two conversions occur, each introducing roundoff error. Better to
store the data losslessly and incur at most one conversion when the
image is finally displayed.
ALPHA CHANNEL CREATION
Encoders should keep in mind the possibility that a viewer will ignore
transparency control. Hence, the colors assigned to transparent pixels
should be reasonable background colors.
For applications that do not require a full alpha channel, or cannot
afford the price in compression efficiency, the tRNS transparency
chunk is also available.
If the image has a known background color, this color should be
written in the bKGD chunk. Even viewers that ignore transparency may
use the bKGD color to fill unused screen area.
FILTER SELECTION
For images of color type 3 (palette-based color), filter type 0 (none)
is usually the most effective.
Filter type 0 is also recommended for images of bit depths less than
8. For low-bit-depth grayscale images, it may be a net win to expand
the image to 8-bit representation and apply filtering, but this is
rare.
For truecolor and grayscale images, any of the five filters may prove
the most effective. If an encoder wishes to use a fixed filter choice,
the Paeth filter is most likely to be the best.
For best compression of truecolor and grayscale images, we recommend
an adaptive filtering approach in which a filter is chosen for each
scanline. The following simple heuristic has performed well in early
tests: compute the output scanline using all five filters, and select
the filter which gives the smallest sum of absolute values of outputs.
(Consider the output bytes as signed differences for this test.) This
method usually outperforms any single fixed filter choice. However, it
is likely that much better heuristics will be found as more experience
is gained with PNG.
Filtering according to these recommendations is effective on
interlaced as well as noninterlaced images.
TEXT CHUNK PROCESSING
If an encoder chooses to support output of zTXt compressed text
chunks, it is recommended that text less than 1K (1024 bytes) in size
be output using uncompressed tEXt chunks. In particular, it is
recommended that the basic title and author keywords be output using
uncompressed tEXt chunks. Lengthy disclaimers, on the other hand, are
an ideal candidate for zTXt.
Encoders should discourage the creation of single lines of text longer
than 79 characters in order to facilititate easy reading.
9. Recommendations for decoders
This chapter gives some recommendations for decoder behavior. The only
absolute requirement on a PNG decoder is that it successfully read any
file conforming to the format specified in the preceding chapters.
However, best results will usually be achieved by following these
recommendations.
CHUNK ERROR CHECKING
Unknown chunk types must be handled as described under Chunk naming
conventions.
It is strongly recommended that decoders verify the CRC on each chunk.
For known-length chunks such as IHDR, decoders should treat an
unexpected chunk length as an error. Future extensions to this
specification will not add new fields to existing chunks; instead, new
chunk types will be added to carry any new information.
Unexpected values in fields of known chunks (for example, an
unexpected compression type in the IHDR chunk) should be checked for
and treated as errors.
PIXEL DIMENSIONS
Non-square pixels can be represented (see the pHYs chunk), but viewers
are not required to account for them; a viewer may present any PNG
file as though its pixels are square.
Conversely, viewers running on display hardware with non-square pixels
are strongly encouraged to rescale images for proper display.
TRUECOLOR IMAGE HANDLING
To achieve PNG's goal of universal interchangeability, decoders are
required to accept all types of PNG image: palette, truecolor, and
grayscale. Viewers running on palette-mapped display hardware need to
be able to reduce truecolor images to palette form for viewing. This
process is usually called "color quantization".
A simple, fast way of doing this is to reduce the image to a fixed
palette. Palettes with uniform color spacing ("color cubes") are
usually used to minimize the per-pixel computation. For
photograph-like images, dithering is recommended to avoid ugly
contours in what should be smooth gradients; however, dithering
introduces graininess which may be objectionable.
The quality of rendering can be improved substantially by using a
palette chosen specifically for the image, since a color cube usually
has numerous entries that are unused in any particular image. This
approach requires more work, first in choosing the palette, and second
in mapping individual pixels to the closest available color. PNG
allows the encoder to supply a suggested palette in a PLTE chunk, but
not all encoders will do so, and the suggested palette may be
unsuitable in any case (it may have too many or too few colors).
High-quality viewers will therefore need to have a palette selection
routine at hand. A large lookup table is usually the most feasible way
of mapping individual pixels to palette entries with adequate speed.
Numerous implementations of color quantization are available. The PNG
reference implementation will include code for the purpose.
DECODER GAMMA HANDLING
To produce correct tone reproduction, a good image display program
must take into account the gammas of both the image file and the
display device. This can be done by calculating
gbright = pixelval / MAXPIXVAL
bright = gbright ^ (1.0 / file_gamma)
gcvideo = bright ^ (1.0 / display_gamma)
fbval = ROUND(gcvideo * MAXFBVAL)
where MAXPIXVAL is the maximum pixel value in the file (255 for 8-bit,
65535 for 16-bit, etc), MAXFBVAL is the maximum value of a frame
buffer pixel (255 for 8-bit, 31 for 5-bit, etc), pixelval is the value
of the pixel in the PNG file, and fbval is the value to write into the
frame buffer. The first line converts from pixel code into a
normalized 0 to 1 floating point value, the second undoes the encoding
of the image file to produce a linear brightness value, the third line
pre-corrects for the monitor's gamma response, and the fourth converts
to an integer frame buffer pixel. In practice the third and fourth
lines are merged into
gcvideo = gbright ^ (1.0 / (file_gamma * display_gamma))
so as to perform only one power calculation.
(Note that this assumes that you want the final image to have a gamma
of 1.0 relative to the original scene. Sometimes it looks better to
make the overall gamma a bit higher, perhaps 1.25. To get this,
replace the first "1.0" in the formula above with
"desired_system_gamma".)
It is not necessary to perform transcendental math for every pixel!
Instead, compute a lookup table that gives the correct output value
for every pixel value. This requires only 256 calculations per image
(for 8-bit accuracy), not one calculation per pixel. For palette-based
images, a one-time correction of the palette is sufficient.
In some cases even computing a gamma lookup table may be a concern. In
these cases, viewers are encouraged to have precomputed gamma
correction tables for file_gamma values of 1.0 and 0.45 and some
reasonable single display_gamma value, and to use the table closest to
the gamma indicated in the file. This will produce acceptable results
for the majority of real files.
In practice, it is often difficult to determine the gamma of the
actual display. It is common to assume a display gamma of 2.2 (or 1.0,
on hardware for which this value is common) and allow the user to
modify this value at their option.
Similarly, when the incoming image has unknown gamma (no gAMA chunk),
choose a likely default value, but allow the user to select a new one
if the result proves too dark or too light.
Finally, note that the response of real displays is actually more
complex than can be described by a single number (display_gamma). If
actual measurements of the monitor's light output as a function of
voltage input are available, the third and fourth lines of the
computation above may be replaced by a lookup in these measurements,
to find the actual frame buffer value that most nearly gives the
desired brightness.
ALPHA CHANNEL PROCESSING
In the most general case, the alpha channel can be used to composite a
foreground image against a background image; the PNG file defines the
foreground image and the transparency mask, but not the background
image. Decoders are not required to support this most general case,
and most likely, few will. It is expected that most will be able to
support compositing with a single background color, however.
Viewers which cannot blend colors smoothly with the background should
interpret all nonzero alpha values as fully opaque (no background).
This case is reasonably simple to implement: transparent pixels are
replaced by the background color, others are unchanged.
If a viewer has no particular background against which to present an
image, it may ignore the alpha channel or tRNS chunk. (But alpha
channel values must still be properly skipped over when reading the
image data.)
However, if the background color has been set with the bKGD chunk, the
alpha channel can be meaningfully interpreted with respect to it even
in a standalone image viewer.
BACKGROUND COLOR
Viewers which have a specific background against which to present the
image will ignore the bKGD chunk, but viewers with no preset
background color may choose to honor it. The background color will
typically be used to fill unused screen space, as well as any
transparent pixels. If no bKGD chunk is present, the viewer must make
its own decision about a suitable background color.
PALETTE HISTOGRAM USAGE
If the viewer is only short a few colors, it is usually adequate to
drop the least-used colors from the palette. To reduce the number of
colors substantially, it's best to choose entirely new representative
colors, rather than trying to use a subset of the existing palette.
This amounts to performing a new color quantization step; however, the
existing palette and histogram can be used as the input data, thus
avoiding a scan of the image data.
If no histogram chunk is provided, a decoder can of course develop its
own, at the cost of an extra pass over the image data.
TEXT CHUNK PROCESSING
If practical, decoders should have a way to display to the user all
tEXt and zTXt chunks found in the file. Even if the decoder does not
recognize a particular text keyword, the user may well be able to
understand it.
Decoders should be prepared to display text chunks which contain any
number of printing characters between newline characters, although
encoders are encouraged to avoid creating lines in excess of 79
characters.
10. Appendix: CRC Pseudocode
(This appendix is not part of the formal PNG specification.)
The CRC definition may look formidable, but it is possible to
implement CRC efficiently without much trouble. This appendix gives
pseudocode showing one practical implementation. Of course, encoders
and decoders are not required to use this particular implementation,
provided that the result is always the same.
In the following pseudocode, hexadecimal numbers are presented in the
format used by the C programming language: the characters "0x"
followed by one or more hexadecimal digits.
The following pseudocode calculates the 32-bit crc for the bytes
b(0..n-1), where n is the total number of input bytes. The polynomial
is x^32+x^26+x^23+x^22+x^16+x^12+x^11+x^10+x^8+x^7+x^5+x^4+x^2+x+1.
Reversed in bit form this is the four-byte unsigned hexadecimal
integer 0xedb88320. The crc is preconditioned with one's and inverted
for placement in the stream. This ensures that a data stream of zeroes
modifies the crc, and that an empty set gives a zero crc.
The function BitwiseExclusiveOR returns the result of an exclusive OR
(XOR) operation on the bits of two unsigned integers. The function
BitwiseAND returns the result of an AND operation on the bits of two
unsigned integers.
The function RightShift returns the result of shifting the bits of an
unsigned integer one bit to the right, displacing the rightmost bit
and filling the leftmost bit with the value zero.
The function BitwiseNegation returns the result of inverting the bits
of an unsigned integer.
; n is the number of bytes on which to compute the CRC
; b(0..n-1) contains the input bytes
; c is an unsigned four-byte integer
; i is an unsigned integer large enough to represent n
; k is an unsigned integer
; xorWith is an unsigned four-byte integer
c = 0xffffffff
i = 0
while i < n begin
c = BitwiseExclusiveOR(c, b(i))
k = 0
while k < 8
begin
if BitwiseAND(c, 1)
begin
xorWith = 0xedb88320
else
xorWith = 0
end
c = BitwiseExclusiveOR( RightShift(c), xorWith)
k = k + 1
end
i = i + 1 end
result = BitwiseNegation(c)
11. Appendix: Rationale
(This appendix is not part of the formal PNG specification.)
This appendix gives the reasoning behind some of the design decisions
in PNG. Many of these decisions were the subject of considerable
debate. The authors freely admit that another group might have made
different decisions; however, we believe that our choices are
defensible and consistent.
WHY A NEW FILE FORMAT?
Does the world really need yet another graphics format? We believe so.
GIF is no longer freely usable, but no other commonly used format can
directly replace it, as is discussed in more detail below. We might
have used an adaptation of an existing format, for example GIF with an
unpatented compression scheme. But this would require new code anyway;
it would not be all that much easier to implement than a whole new
file format. (PNG is deliberately designed so that it is very simple
to implement, with the exception of the compression engine, which
would be needed in any case.) We feel that this is an excellent
opportunity to design a new format that fixes some of the known
limitations of GIF.
WHY THESE FEATURES?
The features chosen for PNG are intended to address the needs of
applications that previously used the special strengths of GIF. In
particular, GIF is well adapted for on-line communications because of
its streamability and progressive disclosure capability. PNG shares
those attributes.
We have also addressed some of the widely known shortcomings of GIF.
In particular, PNG supports truecolor images. We know of no widely
used image format that losslessly compresses truecolor images as
effectively as PNG does. We hope that PNG will make use of truecolor
images more practical and widespread.
Some form of transparency control is desirable for applications in
which images are displayed against a background or together with other
images. GIF provided a simple transparent-color specification for this
purpose. PNG supports a full alpha channel as well as
transparent-color specifications. This allows both highly flexible
transparency and compression efficiency.
Robustness against transmission errors has been an important
consideration. For example, images transferred across Internet are
often mistakenly processed as text, leading to file corruption. PNG is
designed so that such errors can be detected quickly and reliably.
PNG has been expressly designed not to be completely dependent on a
single compression technique. Although inflate/deflate compression is
mentioned in this document, PNG would still exist without it.
WHY NOT THESE FEATURES?
Some features have been deliberately omitted from PNG. These choices
were made to simplify implementation of PNG, promote portability and
interchangeability, and make the format as simple and foolproof as
possible for users. In particular:
* There is no uncompressed variant of PNG. This would merely create
another case for decoders to worry about, and it would make the
format appear more complex for users. ("Why did my 60K file
suddenly become 300K?")
* There is no lossy compression in PNG. Existing formats such as
JFIF already handle lossy compression well. Furthermore, available
lossy compression methods (eg, JPEG) are far from foolproof to use
--- a poor choice of quality level can ruin an image. To avoid
user confusion and unintentional loss of information, we feel it
is best to keep lossy and lossless formats strictly separate.
Also, lossy compression is complex to implement. Adding JPEG
support to a PNG decoder might increase its size by an order of
magnitude. This would certainly cause some decoders to omit
support for the feature, which would destroy our goal of
interchangeability.
* There is no support for CMYK or other unusual color spaces. Again,
this is in the name of promoting portability. CMYK, in particular,
is far too device-dependent to be useful as a portable image
representation.
* There is no standard chunk for thumbnail views of images. In
discussions with software vendors who use thumbnails in their
products, it has become clear that most would not use a "standard"
thumbnail chunk. This is partly because every vendor has a
distinct idea of what the dimensions and characteristics of a
thumbnail should be, and partly because vendors who keep
thumbnails in separate files to accommodate varied image formats
are not going to stop doing that simply because of a thumbnail
chunk in one new format. Proprietary chunks containing
vendor-specific thumbnails appear to be more practical than a
common thumbnail format.
It is worth noting that private extensions to PNG could easily add
these features. We will not, however, admit them as part of the basic
PNG standard.
Basic PNG also does not support multiple images in one file. This
restriction is a reflection of the reality that many applications do
not need and will not support multiple images per file. (While the GIF
standard nominally allows multiple images per file, few applications
actually support it.) In any case, single images are a fundamentally
different sort of object from sequences of images. Rather than make
false promises of interchangeability, we prefer to draw a clear
distinction between single-image and multi-image formats.
There is at present no provision for text employing character sets
other than the ISO 8859-1 (Latin-1) character set. It is recognized
that the need for other character sets will increase. However, PNG
already requires that programmers implement a number of new and
unfamiliar features, and text representation is not PNG's primary
purpose. Since PNG provides for the creation and public registration
of new ancillary chunks of general interest, it is expected that
chunks for other character sets, such as Unicode, will be registered
and increase gradually in popularity.
WHY NOT USE FORMAT XYZ?
Numerous existing formats were considered before deciding to develop
PNG. None could meet the requirements we felt were important for PNG.
GIF is no longer suitable as a universal standard because of legal
entanglements. Although just replacing GIF's compression method would
avoid that problem, GIF does not support truecolor images, alpha
channels, or gamma correction. The spec has more subtle problems too.
Only a small subset of the GIF89 spec is actually portable across a
variety of implementations, but there is no codification of the most
portable part of the spec.
TIFF is far too complex to meet our goals of simplicity and
interchangeability. Defining a TIFF subset would meet that objection,
but would frustrate users making the reasonable assumption that a file
saved as TIFF from Software XYZ would load into a program supporting
our flavor of TIFF. Furthermore, TIFF is not designed for stream
processing, has no provision for progressive disclosure, and does not
currently provide any good, legally unencumbered, lossless compression
method.
IFF has also been suggested, but is not suitable in detail: available
image representations are too machine-specific or not adequately
compressed. The overall "chunk" structure of IFF is a useful concept
which PNG has liberally borrowed from, but we did not attempt to be
bit-for-bit compatible with IFF chunk structure. Again this is due to
detailed issues, notably the fact that IFF FORMs are not designed to
be serially writable.
Lossless JPEG is not suitable because it does not provide for the
storage of palette-color images, and because its lossless truecolor
compression is typically inferior to that of PNG.
BYTE ORDER
It has been asked why PNG uses network byte order. We have selected
one byte ordering and used it consistently. Which order in particular
is of little relevance, but network byte order has the advantage that
routines to convert to and from it are already available on any
platform that supports TCP/IP networking, including all PC platforms.
The functions are trivial and will be included in the reference
implementation. (In any case, the difficulty of implementing
compression is considerably greater than that of handling byte order.)
WHY GAMMA CORRECTION?
Although gamma 1.0 (linear brightness response) might seem a natural
standard, it is common for images to have a gamma of less than 1.
There are three good reasons for this:
1. "Gamma correction" is a standard part of all video signals. It
makes receiver design easier, and it also reduces noise in the
transmission of video signals, both analog and digital. Video
cameras have a gamma of 0.45 (NTSC) or 0.36 (PAL/SECAM), so images
obtained by frame-grabbing video already have this value of gamma.
2. Typical CRT hardware is designed to have a gamma around 2.2, so as
to compensate for standard video image gamma. Hence, an image
gamma of around 0.45 enables the image to be directly displayed on
a CRT without an extra correction step.
3. An image gamma less than 1 allocates more of the available pixel
codes or voltage range to darker areas of the image. This allows
photographic-quality images to be stored in only 24 bits/pixel
without banding artifacts in the darker areas (in most cases).
This makes "gamma encoding" a much better way of storing digital
images than the simpler linear encoding.
In practice, image gamma values around 1.0 and around 0.45 are both
widely found. Older image standards such as GIF often do not account
for this fact, leading to widespread problems with images coming out
too dark or too light.
PNG expects viewers to compensate for image gamma at the time that the
image is displayed. Another possible approach is to expect encoders to
convert all images to a uniform gamma at encoding time. While that
method would speed viewers slightly, it has fundamental flaws:
* Gamma correction is inherently lossy due to roundoff error.
Requiring conversion at encoding time thus causes irreversible
loss. Since PNG is intended to be a lossless storage format, this
is undesirable; we should store unmodified source data.
* The encoder might not know the image gamma. If the decoder does
gamma correction at viewing time, it can adjust the gamma (correct
the displayed brightness) in response to feedback from a human
user. The encoder has no such option.
* Whatever "standard" gamma we settled on would be wrong for some
displays. Hence viewers would still need gamma correction
capability.
Since there will always be images with no gamma or an incorrect
recorded gamma, good viewers will need to incorporate gamma correction
logic anyway. Gamma correction at viewing time is thus the right way
to go.
FILTERING
PNG includes filtering capability because filtering can significantly
reduce the compressed size of truecolor and grayscale images.
Filtering is also sometimes of value on palette images, although this
is less common.
The filter algorithms are defined to operate on bytes, rather than
pixels, for simplicity and speed. Tests have shown that filtering is
ineffective for images with fewer than 8 bits per pixel. The filters
will most often be used on 8-bit-precision data.
A final reason for not using pixel-based filtering is that if an 8-bit
decoder plans to discard the low order byte of 16-bit data, it can do
so before reversing the filter, boosting decoder speed.
The encoder is allowed to change filters for each new scanline. This
creates no additional complexity for decoders, since a decoder is
required to contain unfiltering logic for every filter type anyway.
The only cost is an extra byte per scanline in the pre-compression
data stream. Our tests showed that when the same filter is selected
for all scanlines, this extra byte compresses away to almost nothing,
so there is little storage cost compared to a fixed filter specified
for the whole image. And the potential benefits of adaptive filtering
are too great to ignore. Even with the simplistic filter-choice
heuristics so far discovered, adaptive filtering usually outperforms
fixed filters. In particular, an adaptive filter can change behavior
for successive passes of an interlaced image; a fixed filter cannot.
The basic filters offered by PNG have been chosen on both theoretical
and experimental grounds. In particular, it is worth noting that all
the filters (except "none" and "average") operate by encoding the
difference between a pixel and one of its neighboring pixels. This is
usually superior to conventional linear prediction equations because
the prediction is certain to be one of the possible pixel values. When
the source data is not full depth (such as 5-bit data scaled up to
8-bit depth), this restriction ensures that the numb
er of prediction
delta values is no more than the number of distinct pixel values
present in the source data. A linear equation can produce intermediate
values not actually present in the source data, and thus reduce
compression efficiency.
TEXT STRINGS
Most graphics file formats include the ability to store some textual
information along with the image. But many applications need more than
that: they want to be able to store several identifiable pieces of
text. For example, a database using PNG files to store medical X-rays
would likely want to include patient's name, doctor's name, diagnosis,
etc. A simple way to do this in PNG would be to invent new proprietary
chunks holding text. The disadvantage of such an approach is that
other applications would have no idea what was in those chunks, and
would simply ignore them. Instead, we recommend that text information
be stored in standard tEXt chunks with suitable keywords. Use of tEXt
tells any PNG viewer that the chunk contains text that may be of
interest to a human user. Thus, a person looking at the file with
another viewer will still be able to see the text, and even understand
what it is if the keywords are reasonably self-explanatory. (For the
same reason, we recommend spelled-out keywords, not abbreviations that
will be hard for a person to understand. Saving a few bytes on a
keyword is false economy.)
[Need rationale for specifying Latin-1, or UTF if that's what we
pick.]
PNG FILE SIGNATURE
The PNG signature is equivalent to (in C notation)
\211 P N G \r \n \032 \n
The first two bytes distinguish PNG files on systems that expect the
first two bytes to identify the file type uniquely. The first byte is
chosen as a non-ASCII value to reduce the probability that a text file
may be misrecognized as a PNG file; also, it catches bad file
transfers that zero bit 7. Bytes two through four (overlap with the
first two intentional) name the format. The CR-LF sequence catches bad
file transfers that alter these characters. The control-Z character
stops file display under MSDOS. The final line feed checks for the
inverse of the CR-LF translation problem.
Note that there is no version number in the signature, nor indeed
anywhere in the file. This is intentional: the chunk mechanism
provides a better, more flexible way to handle format extensions, as
is described below.
CHUNK LAYOUT
The chunk design allows decoders to skip unrecognized or uninteresting
chunks: it is simply necessary to skip the appropriate number of
bytes, as determined from the length field.
Limiting chunk length to (2^31)-1 bytes avoids possible problems for
implementations that cannot conveniently handle 4-byte unsigned
values. In practice, chunks will usually be much shorter than that
anyway.
A separate CRC is provided for each chunk in order to detect
badly-transferred images as quickly as possible. In particular,
critical data such as the image dimensions can be validated before
being used. The chunk length is excluded in order to permit CRC
calculation while data is generated (possibly before the length is
known, in the case of variable-length chunks); this may avoid an extra
pass over the data. Excluding the length from the CRC does not create
any extra risk of failing to discover file corruption, since if the
length is wrong, the CRC check will fail (the CRC will be computed on
the wrong bytes and tested against the wrong value from the file
besides).
CHUNK NAMING CONVENTIONS
The chunk naming conventions allow safe, flexible extension of the PNG
format. This mechanism is much better than a format version number,
because it works on a feature-by-feature basis rather than being an
overall indicator. Decoders can process newer files if and only if the
files use no unknown critical features (as indicated by finding
unknown critical chunks). Unknown ancillary chunks can be safely
ignored. Experience has shown that version numbers tend to be set
unnecessarily high, leading to older decoders rejecting files that
they could in fact process (this was a serious problem for several
years after the GIF89 spec came out, for example). Furthermore,
private extensions can be either critical or ancillary, and standard
decoders will react appropriately; version numbers are no help for
private extensions.
A hypothetical chunk for vector graphics would be a critical chunk,
since if ignored, important parts of the intended image would be
missing. A chunk carrying the Mandelbrot set coordinates for a fractal
image would be ancillary, since other applications could display the
image without understanding what it was. In general, a chunk type
should be made critical only if it is impossible to display a
reasonable representation of the intended image without interpreting
that chunk.
The public/private property bit ensures that any newly defined public
chunk types cannot conflict with proprietary chunks that may be in use
somewhere. However, it does not protect users of private chunks from
the possibility that someone else may re-use the same chunk name for a
different purpose. It is a good idea to put additional identifying
information at the start of the data for any private chunk type.
When a PNG file is modified, certain ancillary chunks may need to be
changed to reflect changes in other chunks. For example, a histogram
chunk needs to be changed if the image data changes. If the encoder
does not recognize histogram chunks, copying them blindly to a new
output file is incorrect; such chunks should be dropped. The
safe/unsafe property bit allows ancillary chunks to be marked
appropriately.
Not all possible modification scenarios are covered by the safe/unsafe
semantics; in particular, chunks that are dependent on the total file
contents are not supported. (An example of such a chunk is an index of
IDAT chunk locations within the file: adding a comment chunk would
inadvertently break the index.) Definition of such chunks is
discouraged. If absolutely necessary for a particular application,
such chunks may be made critical chunks, with consequent loss of
portability to other applications. In general, ancillary chunks may
depend on critical chunks but not on other ancillary chunks. It is
expected that mutually dependent information should be put into a
single chunk.
PALETTE HISTOGRAMS
A viewer may not be able to provide as many colors as are listed in
the image's palette. (For example, some colors may be reserved by a
window system.) To produce the best results in this situation, it is
helpful to have information on the frequency with which each palette
index actually appears, in order to choose the best palette for
dithering or drop the least-used colors. Since images are often
created once and viewed many times, it makes sense to calculate this
information in the encoder, although it is not mandatory for the
encoder to provide it.
The same rationale holds good for palettes which are suggested
quantizations of truecolor images. In this situation, it is
recommended that the histogram values represent "nearest neighbor"
counts, that is, the approximate usage of each palette entry if no
dithering is applied. (These counts will often be available for free
as a consequence of developing the suggested palette.)
12. Credits
EDITOR:
Thomas Boutell, boutell@netcom.com
CONTRIBUTING EDITOR:
Tom Lane, tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us
AUTHORS:
Authors' names are presented in alphabetical order.
* Mark Adler, madler@cco.caltech.edu
* Thomas Boutell, boutell@netcom.com
* Adam M. Costello, amc@cs.wustl.edu
* Lee Daniel Crocker, lee@piclab.com
* Oliver Fromme, fromme@rz.tu-clausthal.de
* Jean-Loup Gailly, jloup@chorus.fr
* Alex Jakulin, alex@hermes.si
* Neal Kettler, kettler@cs.colostate.edu
* Tom Lane, tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us
* Dave Martindale, davem@cs.ubc.ca
* Owen Mortenson, ojm@csi.compuserve.com
* Greg Roelofs, newt@uchicago.edu
* Paul Schmidt, photodex@netcom.com
The authors wish to acknowledge the contributions of the Portable
Network Graphics mailing list and the readers of comp.graphics.
End of PNG Specification
//END QUOTE//
___________________________________________
> FRACTINT VERSION 19 STR InfoFile
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
FRACTINT VERSION 19 RELEASED
IN
GRAPHICS DEVELOPERS FORUM
The Stone Soup Group is pleased to announce the release of Fractint
version 19, the first major upgrade of the classic freeware DOS-based
fractal generator in a year and a half. Fractint generates and manipulates
dazzling graphic images created by an enormous variety variety of
mathematical algorithms, including formulas you can type in yourself.
Some of the new features in version 19 include Random Dot Stereogram
generation, magnification of up to 10 to the 1600th power, browser
functions, bailout tests, and enhanced formula and fractal type support.
Fractint is the result of an programming effort by an international
group of enthusiastic volunteers informally known as the "Stone Soup
Group". The name "Stone Soup" comes from the familiar story of the
vagabond soldier who started a pot of soup with a stone, and then inspired
an entire village to add mouth-watering ingredients from their private
pantries. Recent contributions to the "soup" came from Great Britain,
Australia, Brazil, and the USA.
The Stone Soup Group has its online home with the 'Go Graphics' Group
on the CompuServe Information Service, currently in section 4 (Fractal
Sources) of the Graphics Developers Forum (GO GRAPHDEV). Look for the file
FRAINT.EXE, which is the complete Fractint package. The C and assembler
source code is avauilable in FRASRC.EXE.
Fractint is featured in the Waite Group Press book _Fractal Creations
2nd Edition_ by Stone Soup programmers Tim Wegner and Bert Tyler (1994
Waite Group Press, ISBN # 1-878739-34-4), and the upcoming book _Image
Lab Second Edition_ (1995 Waite Group Press.)
For more information on graphics and your computer, GO GRFWELCOME. The
Graphics forums are part of CompuServe's extended services.
__________________________________________________
> THUMBS+PLUS 2.0c STR InfoFile This IS "The REAL thing!"
"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
THUMBS+PLUS VERSION 2.0C
========================
Announcing Thumbs+Plus version 2.0c, the only effective, elegant and
inexpensive way to locate and organize your graphic files. You will be
amazed by this sleek, fast, efficient graphics browser, which includes the
following features. Version 2.0 features are marked with a "+"; features
added in 2.0c are marked with "++".
o Fast and accurate thumbnail generation -- by individual file,
directory or entire disk. Disk and directory scans can be done in the
background, allowing you to continue working.
+ Support for many image and clip-art formats, both raster and vector,
including:
.BMF Corel Gallery clip-art .PAT *Corel pattern files
.BMP,.DIB Windows or OS/2 bitmaps .PCD Kodak PhotoCD
.CDR *CorelDRAW! .PCX,.PCC Zsoft PC Paintbrush
.CGM Computer Graphics Metafiles .PSD ++ Adobe Photoshop 2.5
.CMX *Corel Presentation Exchange .RAS,.SUN Sun Raster files
.CPT Corel PhotoPaint .RAW Raw Grayscale
.EPS *Encapsulated Postscript .RLE Compressed Win Bmps
.GEM GEM Metafiles .TGA,.WIN Targa TrueVision
.GIF CompuServe GIFs .TIF Tagged Image Format
.ICO Windows Icon files .TTF TrueType fonts
.IFF,.LBM Amiga Images, Deluxe Paint .WAV Sound files
.IMG GEM Images .WMF Windows metafiles
.JPG JPEG (JFIF) files .WPG ++ WordPerfect (v1&2)
.MND Mandelbrot for Windows
* Only the preview image is accessibly directly for those types marked
with a (*). The complete image may be available if an OLE server for the
type is loaded on your system.
+ Using Aldus Rev1 graphic filters, which Thumbs+Plus can automatically
locate on your hard disk, you may be able to handle the following formats
(and others)
.DRW Micrographx Designer/Draw .PIC Lotus 1-2-3 Pictures
.DXF AutoCAD (2-D) files .PLT AutoCAD Plot files
.HGL HP Graphics Language .WPG DrawPerfect graphic
.PCT Macintosh PICT files
+ Using OLE, Thumbs+Plus can thumbnail and view any file for which an OLE
server is present on your system. Some possible types include:
.AVI Video for Windows animation .PPT Power Point presentation
.DOC Word for Windows document .PUB Microsoft Publisher
.GRA Microsoft Graph
+ Multiple graphic viewing windows with file save (BMP, GIF, JPG, TGA,
PCX TIF, WMF), print, copy, paste, crop, auto-crop, convert metafiles to
bitmaps and more.
+ On-the-fly gamma correction and quick dithering of 24-bit images for
8-bit (256-color) displays.
+ Zoom-in (2x - 9x), stretch to fit, and stretch to fit width.
o Enhanced solid color metafile viewing with 8-bit (256-color) drivers,
which eliminates that ugly dithering which Windows does by default.
+ Image editing and conversion capabilities:
- Color adjustment (contrast, gamma, brightness, RGB)
- Color depth (bi-level, 4-256 color, grayscale, truecolor) with
several palette selections and dithering options.
- Rotate and re-size with interpolation (anti-aliasing)
- Miscellaneous: Invert, flip vertical, flip horizontal, auto-crop,
swap red and blue.
- Edit or add comments to supported types (TIF, GIF, JPEG).
- Batch (unattended, background) mode to edit and convert multiple
files, while still using your computer for other tasks.
+ For saving JPEG files, Thumbs+Plus provides a "loss preview" so you can
see an indication of the difference between the original and the
compressed file. (Requires 16- or 24-bit display.)
+ Install and remove TrueType fonts quickly and easily -- while looking
at them. ++ It also shows which fonts are currently installed (by font
name).
+ Support for drag-and-drop from File Manager to view, drag-and-drop to
other applications (like File Manager), and DDE support for using
Thumbs+Plus to view files (or open Thumbs+Plus databases) from File
Manager.
o File management capabilities, including drag-and-drop for file
organization, a color-coded directory tree for quickly locating
directories with graphics, directory creation and file renaming, copying,
deleting and moving.
o Off-line (removable) device support, for cataloging floppies, CD-ROMs
or other removable media. The thumbnails are available even when the disk
is not on-line -- and Thumbs+Plus can even label disks.
o Complete or partial catalog printing, with scaleable thumbnails, file
captions (if desired), and user layout control.
o User-specified editors let you pick the editor of your choice -- by
file type, or use the File Manager association.
+ "Automatic Clipboard Save" provides the ability to automatically save
clipboard contents to disk files. Thumbs+Plus saves each time the
clipboard changes.
- Select format (BMP, GIF, JPG, PCX, TGA).
- Clipboard metafiles can be saved as .WMF or converted to a raster
format.
- Specify the desired path and file name prefix.
- Useful for screen or window capture too (using PrintScreen and
ALT+PrintScreen).
- Unobtrusive -- you don't have to activate the program for each
capture.
o A built-in Windows Wallpaper hanger (centered or tiled) for any
supported file type, and a customizable full-screen slide show. ++ Now
you can remove wallpaper from the program, too.
o A toolbar and keyboard shortcuts for common functions.
o Extensive on-line help and customization of many aspects of the
program.
++ Automatic (or manual, by directory tree or disk) removal of "orphaned"
thumbnails (thumbnails for files which were moved or deleted from another
program).
++ Customization of the file list, so that it can include the date and
time or size of the files, and for sorting by date, size, extension or
name.
++ Selection of files to display, or files to select, by file name mask.
++ Export selected thumbnails to Windows bitmap files.
NOTE:
-----
Thumbs+Plus is distributed as shareware and may be evaluated free of
charge for up to thirty days. If you continue to use Thumbs+Plus after
the thirty days have elapsed, you must register. The price for an
individual license is US $50. Site and corporate licenses are available.
Further information about licensing and ordering is available in the
on-line help file.
To obtain Thumbs+Plus version 2.0c:
-----------------------------------
CompuServe: THMPLS.EXE in GRAPHSUP forum, library 3 (GIF viewers)
THMPLS.EXE in DTPFORUM, library 6 (PC DTP Utilites)
THMPLS.EXE in WPUSER forum, Library 16 (Presentations/Graphics)
THMPLS.EXE in WINFUN forum, library 9 (Graphics Utilities)
Also available in other forums.
America Online: THMPLS.EXE in the Windows area
Internet: cerious/thmpls.exe via anonymous ftp from vnet.net
The Bounty BBS: 1-904-786-4176 Graphics Library
Installation is simplicity itself: Just run the program and it will set up
and configure itself automatically.
________________________________________________
> WIN'95 NEWS STR FOCUS! "..on Track for August Ship Date"
""""""""""""""""""""""
MICROSOFT REMAINS ON TRACK
FOR WIN'95
AUGUST 1995 SHIP DATE
Seattle WA -- February 18, 1995 --Forrester Research, Inc., issued a
report on February 17, 1995 which stated Microsoft Windows 95 would not
ship until November 1995. This report is not accurate; Microsoft remains
on track for an August, 1995 ship date. More detail on the report and
Windows 95 is attached below.
In their report, Forrester cites several data points which are inaccurate.
Specifically Forrester references ISV feedback, the addition of new
product features, and makes incorrect assumptions about Microsoft s
desktop application product development plans.
Microsoft would like to provide clarification on each of these points.
Firstly, contrary to the Forrester report, feedback from ISVs on Windows
95 progress is quite positive. In fact, Microsoft is in constant touch
with ISVs and other beta testers and the feedback received is consistent
with Microsoft s readying of the M8 Beta and Windows Preview Program
releases for March. Secondly, contrary to the Forrester report, Microsoft
is focused on fixing the remaining compatibility bugs in the product and
is not adding new features at this time. Finally, Microsoft has not made
any announcements regarding its desktop suite of products other than
affirming a committment to deliver 32-bit versions of its applications
within 90 days of the shipment of Windows 95.
In addition, Microsoft is working closely with corporate accounts to beta
test and rollout the Windows 95 beta releases to select departments in an
effort to help reduce the cost of Windows 95 deployment. Microsoft also
continues to work with PC manufacturers to produce great Plug and Play
machines which will be ready for the Christmas selling season. Thus, all
evidence and feedback Microsoft has received points to Windows 95 being
ready for release to 400,000 testers in the form of the Windows Preview
Program in March with final shipment in August 1995.
Press Contacts:
---------------
Colleen Lacter, Karla Wachter--Waggener Edstrom, 503/245-0905
__________________________________________
> INDEO VIDEO UPDATE! STR InfoFile
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Intel Indeo(R) Video R3.2 Update -- V3.23.01.01
Microsoft Video for Windows 1.1d
February 22, 1994
This software update is provided to enhance your existing Indeo(R) Video
drivers to the latest video technology for compressing, editing and
playing back video on your Intel microprocessor-based desktop computer,
using Microsoft's Video for Windows* Version 1.1d.
Indeo Video technology gives you the capability to capture and compress
video in a single step using Intel's Smart Video Recorder (ISVR) and ISVR
Pro. It also allows you to encode and decode (i.e. play back) video using
only software on your PC.
The ISVR Pro works with camcorders, VCRs and laser disks to capture Indeo
Video. It immediately compresses NTSC or PAL format files at 320x240,
240x180, and 160x120 pixel resolutions at up to 30 frames per second
(fps).
In addition, the built-in scalability of Indeo technology automatically
adjusts the playback frame rate depending on your computer's performance
capabilities. This allows you to play Indeo video files on any Intel
Pentium(R) or Intel486(TM) processor-based computer.
Readme.txt Topics:
------------------
* Improvements
* Indeo Video Drivers
* Differences from Microsoft's VfW 1.1d Update
* System.ini Entries
* AVI File Editors
* Known Operating Characteristics
* Software Requirements
* Optimum System Recomendation
* Technical Support and Updates
* Microsoft Readme.txt file for VfW 1.1d
Improvements:
-------------
This version of the Indeo Video R3.2 driver is an update to Indeo Video
R3.1 and Video for Windows V1.1d. It provides:
* Supports the Display Control Interface (DCI).
* Supports active palette.
* Improved visual quality. There is significantly more foreground
and background detail for most sequences, particularly at 15fps
with data rates of 135KB/sec or higher.
* Improved video playback performance at low data rates.
* Improved 16-bit image quality and playback performance.
* Improved audio playback at low data rates.
* Compression and decompression of images up to 640x480 size in
4-pixel increments. Note: 640x480x10 video with a 240KB/sec transfer
rate, has been measured to play back at close to 10 fps.
* Improved software encoder performance (2 to 5 sec/frame on a Pentium
processor system).
* Faster initialization.
Improvements in V3.23.01.01 over V3.22.01.44:
1) Less memory allocated during playback.
2) More tolerant of errors in the video bit stream. Not as likely to
GPF if a bit stream error is encountered during playback.
3) Subsampling changed to minimize color bleeding.
Improvements in V3.22.01.44 over V3.22.01.43:
1) Fixes a potential problem with the floating point library not being
exited correctly while compressing a file.
Improvements in V3.22.01.43 over V3.22.01.30:
1) Fixes color shift when using Active Palette support.
2) Fixes sustained palette flash when video is placed in the background.
3) Correctly rejects AVI files with odd size images.
4) Fixed a possible GPF when insufficient memory was available.
5) The new Raw driver displays correctly under Adobe Premiere*.
Indeo Video Drivers:
--------------------
Indeo(TM) Video R3.2 -- V3.23.01.01 incorporates the new Indeo
Video R3.2 software codec that produces
the highest quality video for software
playback on Intel microprocessor based
desktop computers.
[filename: ir32.dll]
Indeo(TM) Video Raw -- V1.10.1.6 incorporates the raw/YVU9 codec.
[filename: iyvu9.dll]
Indeo(TM) Video R2.1 -- V2.17.003 incorporates a decompressor only.
It plays back files created with the older
R2.1 codec.
[filename: ir21.dll]
Differences from Microsoft's VfW 1.1d Update:
---------------------------------------------
The Setup utility used to install this update is a modified version of the
Setup utility Microsoft provides with their runtime package. It is
possible to make further changes to this program. The Microsoft Setup
program used to come with V3.1 of the Windows SDK. It is now available to
registered users of Visual C++ by calling Microsoft Product Support.
All of the Intel and non-Intel codecs are installed by this update.
Listed below are the differences between this update and the one supplied
by Microsoft:
1. Installs R3.2 V3.23.01.01 driver rather than V3.22.1.43.
2. The Raw driver (iyvu9.dll) is updated.
3. A file called ir30.dll is installed. See the following section
for details.
4. The R2.1 driver is renamed to ir21.dll.
5. The readme.txt and copyrite.txt files are added. This
readme.txt file may be deleted prior to distribution.
6. The files in this update do not all fit on one 3.5" diskette.
7. The file dcisvga.drv is not installed.
System.ini Entries:
-------------------
The Setup program installs the Indeo video drivers along with the latest
Video for Windows runtime. It places the following entries in the
system.ini file for the Indeo video drivers:
[drivers]
VIDC.RT21=ir21.dll
VIDC.YVU9=iyvu9.dll
VIDC.IV31=ir32.dll
VIDC.IV32=ir32.dll
Previously, the recommended system.ini entries for Indeo video R3.1 looked
as follows:
[drivers]
VIDC.RT21=indeov.drv
VIDC.YVU9=indeov.drv
VIDC.IV31=indeov.drv
Indeov.drv was an "umbrella" driver that used a text file called indeo.ini
to point to the various Indeo video drivers. The indeo.ini file had the
following entries:
[GLOBAL]
DRIVERS=IV31,RT21,YVU9
[IV31]
DEC=ir30.dll
[RT21]
DEC=ir21_r.dll
[YVU9]
DEC=ir21_r.dll
Indeov.drv and indeo.ini are no longer used and may be deleted if desired.
However, older applications, which install the Indeo video drivers, may
still use indeov.drv and indeo.ini. Since the name of the latest Indeo
video driver has changed from ir30.dll to ir32.dll, this would prevent
IV31 files from accessing the latest driver. To avoid this problem, an
exact copy of the latest ir32.dll file, named ir30.dll, is also installed
by this setup program.
It is hoped the ir30.dll file will not be used. But if another setup
program should change the system.ini entries to point to indeov.drv, then
the correct driver will still be accessed through ir30.dll. In the
future, this precaution should not need to be taken.
AVI File Editors:
-----------------
This is a recommendation for developers of AVI file editors. To avoid
unnecessary recompression, it is recommended the IV31 and IV32 video
formats be treated as the same video format. This speeds up editing
operations and improves video quality. When a video editor saves an
edited AVI file, the video formats of the source video frames are compared
to the video format chosen for the target file. Typically, any frames not
in the target format are recompressed. If a clip contains a mixture of
IV31 and IV32 frames, and the output format is IV32, it is not necessary
to recompress the IV31 frames. The Indeo video R3.2 codec will play back
both video formats.
Known Operating Characteristics:
--------------------------------
1) The new Indeo Video R3.2 driver can play back AVI files
compressed using the older R3.0 and R3.1 drivers. However, AVI
files created by the R3.2 software encoder cannot be played back
using the Indeo video R3.0 or R3.1 drivers. Microsoft's Media
Player will report the error "Video not available, cannot find
'vids.iv32' decompressor."
2) The R2.1 driver does not display a setup dialog box from
the Control Panel.
3) Digital Video Arts, Ltd. has an Indeo video R3.2 driver that
supports hardware playback. Call 215-576-7920 to inquire about
their NewWorld Operating Environment.
4) The Setup utility could fail unexpectedly at the end of installation.
If this occurs, it is usually due to low memory conditions. Close all
other applications before installation.
Software Requirements:
-----------------------
* Video for Windows V1.1d
* Windows 3.1
Optimum System Recomendation:
-----------------------------
For the highest image quality and playback, the following system
requirements are recommended:
* Intel Pentium processor
* System RAM: 12+ MB
* PCI bus graphics controller with DCI-enabled drivers
* SCSI or Enhanced IDE hard drive
For best frame rate performance, put the graphics card in 8-bit
color mode. For best image quality, put the graphics card in
24-bit color mode.
Technical Support and Updates:
------------------------------
For technical assistance, post a message on the IntelArch forum of
CompuServe in library #9.
As new Indeo video drivers are released, they will be made available on
CompuServe INTELARCH forum and Intel's Application Support BBS at (916)
356-3600.
Updates are also available on Internet at:
ftp://ftp.intel.com/pub/IAL/Indeo_video and at
http://www.intel.com/IAL/indeo/indeo.html.
Microsoft Readme.txt file for VfW 1.1d:
---------------------------------------
Dear Video for Windows Developer:
Enclosed you will find the Video for Windows 1.1d Runtime. This release
includes some important enhancements requested by you, including improved
palette support, Display Control Interface (DCI) support and overall
improvements in performance.
The files that have changed are the following:
----------------------------------------------
File Name Change Description
AVICAP.DLL Added application pre-roll and post-roll support.
DVA.386 Added DCI support.
ICCVID.DRV Cinepak Codec: Added palette support.
IMAADPCM.ACM IMA ADPCM Codec: Change in the compression
algorithm used in order to fully meet the
official format specifications.
IR32.DLL Indeo Codec: Updated to version 3.2, added palette
support.
MSVIDEO.DLL Added palette and DCI support.
MSVIDEO.NT Updated the Windows NT 3.5 to support 16 bit
capture.
OLE2DISP.DLL Updated to current release of OLE.
OLE2NLS.DLL Updated to current release of OLE.
SETUP.INF Updated to new file sizes, versions and dates.
STDOLE.TLB OLE file missing from original VfW runtime.
TYPELIB.DLL Updated to current release of OLE.
Palette Support
---------------
Video for Windows has always allowed the application to select a specific
palette for playback on 8 bit displays. Unfortunately, the codecs
(compressor\decompressors) were never aware of this palette request.
Instead the codecs would dither to their own standard palette. Video for
Windows would then further dither the video to the requested color
palette.
The net result was 24 bit videos, when played back with a requested
palette, were dithered twice. This would compromise the quality of the
video.
This problem has been solved with this new drop of MSVIDEO.DLL, and the
Cinepak and Indeo codecs. The codecs will now decompress directly to a
requested palette. You can request the codecs to use a palette with
either the SETVIDEO <alias> PALETTE HANDLE TO <hpal>, or REALIZE <alias>
BACKGROUND MCI commands. You can find these commands in the Video for
Windows 1.1 documentation.
DCI Support
-----------
DCI allows Video for Windows to take advantage of the enhanced
capabilities of your display cards. Video for Windows will support all
DCI-enabled display adapters. Furthermore, the performance of stretched
and clipped videos will be drastically improved for all displays.
For further information on API changes, please see the "New Performance
APIs" listed in the DEV_KIT.TXT of the Video for Windows SDK. This SDK is
available from the Fall '94 addition of the MSDN Level II.
Sincerely,
The Video for Windows Team
* Other brands and names are the property of their respective owners.
____________________________________________
> SPEED DEMON! STR FOCUS! ZEOS PANTERA 90 W/CORAL MOTHERBOARD
""""""""""""""""""""""
SPEED DEMON & POWERHOUSE
========================
ZEOS PANTERA-90
Here are the specs:
Overview and Features
=====================
Product Overview
----------------
The Coral-Max is a highly integrated baby-AT form factor system
motherboard.
Using one Pentium-90 interstitial ZIF sockets, it offers an upgrade path
from a single processor Pentium On board voltage regulation is provided to
allow CPUs of other voltages than 3.3V to be used. Alternativly this
allows a supply without 3.3V to power the board. The board features three
PCI local bus master slots.
Integrated features include two local-bus IDE ports, FLASH BIOS, floppy
controller, two enhanced high-speed serial ports, one enhanced parallel
port, 16-bit games-compatible audio, and optional local-bus Ethernet
and/or SCSI ports.. The system secondary cache is optionally upgradable to
256K or 512K.
Main memory uses standard 32 or 36 bit SIMMs and may be as much as 384MB.
Specifications
==============
GENERAL SPECIFICATIONS
----------------------
System
Processor Type............. Intel Pentium-75/90/100 (aka P54C)
Chipset.................... Intel 'Neptune' chipset
System Speed............... 90MHz, 100MHz
Expansion Interface........ ISA Bus w/ 3 PCI local bus slots
Memory
Memory Type................ 1, 2, 4,16, 32MB X36 or X32 SIMMS
Memory Speed............... 50ns,60ns,70ns
Configurations............. 2,4,6,8,10,12,16,32,64,128,192,384MB, etc.
Min. Capacity............ 2MB
Max. Capacity............ 384MB
System Cache
Cache Memory Type........... 256KB or 512KB SIMM, Burst or Async.
Mapping..................... Direct-mapped
Write Policy................ Write-back
Configurations.............. 0KB, 256KB, 512KB
Standard Capacity........... 0KB
Min. Capacity............... 0KB
Max. Capacity............... 512KB
I/O Bus
Bus Configuration........... 5 ISA, 3 PCI Local Bus (One slot is shared)
I/O BUS Speed............... 7.5Mhz for 90Mhz; 8.25Mhz for 100Mhz systems
I/O Transfer Rate........... Up to 33MB/s
PCI Bus..................... Up to 132MB/s(l00Mhz), 120MB/s(90Mhz)
I/O Interfaces
I/O Chipset................. NCR82C742 (Machete)
Serial Ports................ Two, one D69, one DB25
Serial Uart Type............ 16550
Parallel Ports.............. One, Bidirectional port on DB25 connector.
Port configurable to uni-direction via
software.
Floppy...................... Control two drives: 360 Kbytes, 1.2 Mbytes,
720 Kbytes, 1.44 Mbytes, 2.88Mbytes.
IDE......................... PC Tech RZ1000 PCI Bus IDE controller with
support for four IDE type drives thru two
ports.
SCSI option................. AMD Am53C974 on PCI bus
Network option.............. AMD Am79C970 on PCI bus
SCSI/Network option......... AMD Am79C974 on PCI bus
BIOS Subsystem
BIOS Type................... FLASH,lMb
BIOS Vendor................. Phoenix Technologies, Ltd.
BIOS Features............... Built-in SETUP, Power-on self-test(POST)
diagnostics. Drive table with four user
definable drives. Auto-Configuring I/O. ISA
'Plug-and-Play'compatible.
ROM shadowing............... System and Video ROM shadowing
Operating Environment
Power Consumption........... Typical 25 Watt(dependent on CPU and memory)
Air Flow.................... [TBA]
Temperature................. 0 degrees C to 40 degrees C
Humidity.................... Up to 1 00% non-condensing
Additional Features
Audio option................ On-board Windows compatible 16-bit games
compatible audio solution using ESS1488
CODEC. ADPCM compression supported. DMA and
IRQs are programmable.
Connectors.................. Reset switch, Keyboard lock with power LED,
Speaker, 2 Serial headers/cables with DB9
and DB25 connector, Parallel header/cable
with DB25 connector, two IDE headers, Floppy
header, SCSI header, ethernet AUI and
0Base-T headers, and audio header.
MECHANICAL
==========
Electrical/Component Restrictions
---------------------------------
Motherboard mounting holes will conform to standard baby-at footprint.
System board uses a logical layout which allows for easy option upgrade
and assembly.
CRITICAL BOARD COMPONENTS
Mfg. PN Description Vendor Qty/Asy
82434NX Chipset-PCMC Intel 1
82433NX Chipset-LBX Intel 1
82378ZB Chipset-SIO Intel 1
82379IB Chipset-SIO.A Intel 1 (optional, for dual CPU)
ESS1488 Audio CODEC ESS 1 (optional)
CELP2X80SC3Z48 Cache Connector Burndy 1
Configurable options
512K Synchronous Cache Option
Mfg. PN Description Vendor Qty/Asy
IDT7MP6182S9M 512K Cache Module IDT 1
256K Synchronous Cache Option
IDT7MP6181S9M 256K Cache Module IDT 1
256K Asynchronous Cache Option
Mfg. PN Description Vendor Qty/Asy
IDT7MPV6179Sl7M 256K Cache Module IDT 1
AS7M64P3256-15C 256K Cache Module Alliance1
512K Asynchronous Cache Option
Mfg. PN Description Vendor Qty/Asy
IDT7MPV6180S17M 1M Cache Module IDT 1 Note: Only 512K useable
AS7M64P3256-15C 1M Cache Module Alliance1
SCSI Option
Mfg. PN Description Vendor Qty/Asy
Am53C974 SCSI Controller AMD 1
Network Option
Mfg. PN Description Vendor Qty/Asy
Am79C970 Ethernet Controller AMD 1
ACT2T-01 10Base-2/T Adapter CardHalo 1 -OR-
ACT5T-01 10Base-5/T Adapter CardHalo 1
SCSI/Network Option
Mfg. PN Description Vendor Qty/Asy
Am53C970 SCSI/Network ControllerAMD 1
ACT2T-01 10Base-2/T Adapter CardHalo 1 -OR-
ACT5T-01 10Base-5/T Adapter CardHalo 1
MEMORY Base
The system uses from two to six high speed x36 or x32 based simms. The
minimal amount of memory that can be installed is 2MB. Modules must
ALWAYS be installed as pairs. The system is capable of using both page,
interleaved and page-interleaved memory schemes depending on the amount
of system memory installed.
Expansion
The system is memory is upgradable to 2MB, 4MB, 8MB, 10MB, 12MB, 24MB,
32MB, 64MB, 128MB, 192MB, 256MB and 384MB of memory. The following chart
shows some of the many available memory configurations.
Memory Size How Memory Scheme
2MB 2-1MB simm Page
4MB 2-2MB simms Page/interleaved
8MB 2-4MB simms Page/interleaved
10MB 2-4MB, 1-2MB simm Page/Interleaved
12MB 6-2MB simms Page/Interleaved
16MB 4-2MB simms Page/Intedeaved
24MB 6-4MB simms Page/Interleaved
32MB 4-8MB simms Page/Interleaved
64MB 4-16MB simms Page/interleaved
128MB 4-32MB simms Page/Interleaved
256MB 4-64MB simms Page/interleaved
384MB 6-64MB simms Page/Interleaved
Other possibilities exist which are not shown.
ROM Shadowing
System BIOS and Video shadowing options can be enabled and disabled via
system setup.
Cache
The Base system cache is 0K. The cache is upgradable to 256K and 512K of
cache via a single industry-standard cache SIMM. The cache controller is
integrated into the system chipset.
Mapping..................... Direct-mapped
Write Policy................ Write-back
Configurations.............. 256KB,512KB
Standard Capacity........... 0KB
Min. Capacity............... 0KB
Max Capacity................ 512KB
Cache memory type........... Cache SIMM, Synchronous or Asynch.
Cache memory Speed.......... 9ns Burst /15ns Async.
Cache memory Part number.... IDT7MPV6179/80/81/82
BIOS AND SETUP Version
----------------------
The BIOS is Phoenix Technologies based code customized for this design.
The base code is called 'NuBIOS'. Refer to ZEOS PCI Product BIOS
Specification document for complete BIOS details.
FUNCTIONAL
Reset Switch
A connect for an external reset is implemented on the system board.
Activation of this switch will cause the CPU to perform a system reset.
Turbo Mode
Keyboard selectable turbo/slow mode switch is provided. Activation of
this switch will cause the system performance to decrease. While the
processor speed is not affected, the decrease in performance will provide
an acceptable means of executing application that are CPU speed
dependent.
LED Indicators
Connectors for LEDs are to provide to indicate the following conditions:
power on, low-power mode and IDE disk activity. No indication is given
for SCSI activity.
Serial Port
Two 16550 compatible serial ports are integrated into the system board.
The system board headers will accommodate one DB9 and one D625. Pins out
of serial port headers are consistent with Cobra/Rattler/Gosling/Martin
board serial port headers.
Parallel Port
The parallel port is a bidirectional, Centronics-compatible 25-pin
parallel port. In setup, the user can select the system to boot with the
port in uni- or bidirectional modes. The port defaults to bidirectional.
Security
Built in BIOS level password is provided. An optional hardware keyboard
lock may be implemented.
ENVIRONMENTAL
Temperature
Operation.................. 5C to 35C
Storage/Transportation..... 20C to 60C
Humidity
Operation.................. 20%RH to 80%RH
Storage/Transportation..... 10%RH to 90%RH
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
A T T E N T I O N -- A T T E N T I O N -- A T T E N T I O N
FARGO PRIMERA PRO COLOR PRINTERS - 600DPI
For a limited time only; If you wish to have a FREE sample printout sent
to you that demonstrates FARGO Primera & Primera Pro SUPERIOR QUALITY
600dpi 24 bit Photo Realistic Color Output, please send a Self Addressed
Stamped Envelope [SASE] (business sized envelope please) to:
STReport's Fargo Printout Offer
P.O. Box 6672
Jacksonville, Florida 32205-6155
Folks, the FARGO Primera Pro has GOT to be the best yet. Its far superior
to the newest of Color Laser Printers selling for more than three times as
much. Its said that ONE Picture is worth a thousand words. Send for this
sample now. Guaranteed you will be amazed at the superb quality. (please,
allow at least a one week turn-around)
A T T E N T I O N -- A T T E N T I O N -- A T T E N T I O N
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
:HOW TO GET YOUR OWN GENIE ACCOUNT:
_________________________________
Set your communications software to Half Duplex (or Local Echo)
Call: (with modem) 800-638-8369.
Upon connection type HHH (RETURN after that).
Wait for the U#= prompt.
Type: XTX99587,CPUREPT then, hit RETURN.
GENIE Information Services copyright 1995 by General Electric
Information Services/GENIE, reprinted by permission
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
___ ___ _____ _______
/___| /___| /_____| /_______/ The Macintosh RoundTable
/____|/____| /__/|__| /__/ ________________________
/_____|_____|/__/_|__|/__/
/__/|____/|__|________|__/
/__/ |___/ |__|_/ |__|_/____ Managed by SyndiComm
/__/ |__/ |__|/ |__|______/
An Official Forum of the International Computer Users Group
*** STReport available in MAC RT ***
ASCII TEXT
for ALL GENIE users!
MAC/APPLE SECTION (II)
======================
John Deegan, Editor (Temp)
> COMPUTER CRIME AND COUNTERMEASURES STR InfoFile
"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
COMPUTER CRIME AND COUNTERMEASURES
ON-LINE SEMINAR -=- May 01, 1995
IT'S COMING . . . May 1, 1995
-------------------------------
What is It? An Entirely New, More Effective and More
Efficient Form of Professional Education
What's It Called? Computer Crime and Countermeasures.
It's professional education
delivered by the National Computer
Security Association (NCSA) Forum on
CompuServe (GO NCSAEDU).
How Long Will It Last? 30 Days
What's the Topic? Preventing damage to information technology
by understanding and countering common techniques
of computer crime.
Who's the Teacher? M. E. Kabay, Ph.D., Director of Education of the NCSA.
Who Is It For ?
- Security Managers
- Online and MIS Professionals
- Office Managers
- Microcomputer, LAN, WAN Administrators
What Will I Learn About ?
- Definitions of the Information Technology Security Mission
- Extent and sources of damage to I.T. systems
- Risk management
- Sabotage
- Impersonation
- Spoofs
- Data diddling
- Superzapping
- Scavenging
- Wiretapping
- Data Leakage
- Logic bombs
- Trap doors
- Trojan horse programs
- Salami attacks
- Forgery and counterfeits
- Viruses
- Anti-virus technology
Why Learn About That ?
=> Information drives modern organizations of all kinds
=> Information in the wrong hands can ruin your effectiveness
=> Damaged data cause disastrous decisions
=> Missing data cause delays
=> Stolen data damage competitiveness
=> Computer crime is a growing problem
=> Countermeasures are not difficult to implement
Why on-line * No Travel
professional * No Time Away from Home/Office
education? * No Schedule Conflicts
* Interactive Discussion for 30-days
* Rich Learning Environment
* Ample Opportunity for Questions
from the Floor
* Accessible 24 hours a day;
participate from home, while you
are on the road, from anywhere!
How will the seminar work?
An exclusive discussion group will be opened as a private section of the
NCSA Security Vendor Forum (GO NCSAEDU) on CompuServe. The seminar will
run for 30 days. On each weekday during that period, the instructor will
post new material for all participants to consider. Then (at any time
that is convenient) each participant will retrieve the material using
their computer.
Each major topic of discussion will be maintained as a unique "thread".
Participants may next post questions or comments in the discussion group.
Dr Kabay will respond to questions and facilitate debate among the
participants.
As this process proceeds, there will likely be several issues under
discussion at any particular time. Wright will keep the discussion
organized so you can easily follow it. If parts do not interest you, you
can ignore them. If you are out of touch for a day, or two, or even a
week, you will not miss what happened during that time. None of the core
material or discussion will be deleted until the end of the seminar.
Questions about any issue in the curriculum may be raised and discussed
at any time -- even if the core material has moved on to other issues.
To keep the seminar moving through the many topics in the curriculum, the
instructor will post new material each business day. Even if there are no
questions and no debate from participants (highly unlikely), the core
material Kabay brings to the seminar will give you a solid grounding in
the law of electronic commerce.
Seminar Instructions
--------------------
The instructor will send private EMail to all students prior to the start
of the course to provide last minute instructions.
Meet Your Instructor- Michel E. Kabay, Ph.D.
--------------------------------------------
Dr. Kabay has specialized in consulting and training for systems
performance, systems operations, and systems security. He is Director of
Education for the National Computer Security Association in the U.S. and
is security columnist for Network World, Computing Canada and INTERACT
magazine.
He teaches Information Security, Current Technology, and Security in the
John Abbott College Programmers' Course. In addition, he teaches The Art
of Technical Support in the John Abbott program in Technical Support and
is the instructor for the Information Technology Security course at the
Institute for Government Informatics Professionals under the aegis of the
University of Ottawa.
Dr Kabay has published over 150 technical papers and is completing a
college textbook Enterprise Systems Security for publication in late 1995.
He won the Best Paper Award at the 16th National Computer Security
Conference in 1993 for his submission, "Social Psychology and INFOSEC:
Psycho-social Factors in the Implementation of Information Security
Policy." He was the Program Chair for the Second International Conference
on Information Warfare in Montreal, 18-19 January 1995.
Dr Kabay earned his M.Sc. (McGill, 1972) in Teratology, the study of
developmental malformations. In 1976, he received his Ph.D. in applied
statistics and invertebrate zoology. Until 1979, he was a university
professor in applied statistics.
Kabay joined the Montreal practice of LGS Group Inc., a multinational
information technology consulting firm, in January 1995 as a Management
Consultant specializing in operations and security.
Views expressed in the seminar are those of the individuals expressing
them and not necessarily those of sponsors, employers or anyone else.
Ways to Register
----------------
FAX: 717-243-8642
CALL: 717-258-1816
EMail: 74774.1326@compuserve.com
MAIL: NCSA
10 S. Courthouse Ave.
Carlisle, PA 17013
FEE
---
Covers your access to a private section of NCSAs CompuServe forum, which
is accessed via GO NCSAEDU. You pay for your regular on-line charges for
using CompuServe unless you have elected the "usage free" plan. You can
keep on-line charges to a minimum by reading material and composing
responses off-line.
CompuServe Membership
---------------------
To obtain a free introductory CompuServe membership, courtesy of NCSA,
call 800-848-8199 and ask for Representative 433. If you plan to use
CompuServe and are not presently a subscriber, be sure to allow several
weeks for CompuServe to process your application.
Group Discounts and Repostings:
-------------------------------
Group discounts are available if your organization brings two or more
people to the seminar. Your organization can -- indirectly -- send many
people to the seminar by reposting the seminar content on an internal
corporate bulletin board (access to which is restricted) or by
redistributing content via private e-mail.
Your organization must pay for all of the people within your organization
who will view the seminar content.
If you have a group discount, your organization must access the seminar
through at least one account on CompuServe. Your organization would be
responsible for delivering the content of the seminar to people who are
not on CompuServe and for posting questions from those people in the forum
on CompuServe.
Cancellation Policy:
--------------------
After you have registered for the seminar, you may cancel under these
terms: $35 fee charged if cancellation is received by NCSA before seminar
starts. Full amount charged if cancellation is made on the day of the
course or if the student is a no-show. Substitutions are accepted.
Late Registrations
------------------
Late registrations will be accepted for each date. You can register and
start a course as much as two weeks after it starts. All of the material
will be waiting for you.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
REGISTRATION FORM
(1)NAME_________________________________________________________
(2)NAME_________________________________________________________
(3)NAME_________________________________________________________
Organization____________________________________________________
Address_________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________
City____________________________________________________________
State/Zip_______________________________________________________
Phone_________________________ Fax_____________________________
Email Address___________________________________________________
COMPUTER CRIME AND COUNTERMEASURES - ON-LINE SEMINAR
Choose Date : o May 1, 1995
Choose Plan: o $395 + normal CompuServe usage charges
o $450 CompuServe usage charges suspended
within the NCSAFORUM during seminar.
You remain responsible for obtaining a
CompuServe account and for paying for all
fees and connect charges outside of the
seminar.
Group Discount
Schedule:
2 people $ 690
3 1035
4 1295
5 1545
$220 for each additional person from 6 through 9
$150 for each additional person from 10 through 19
$100 for each additional person from 20 and up
$_____________ TOTAL DUE
Method of Payment:
o Check Enclosed o AMEX o VISA o MasterCard
#________________________________________Exp Date__________
Caution: It is not recommended that you send credit card
information via the InterNet.
PLEASE TAKE A MOMENT TO TELL US HOW YOU HEARD ABOUT THE SEMINAR:
___ CompuServe: Forum Name: _______________________________
___ World Wide Web Home Page: _______________________________
___ InterNet: NewsGroup: _______________________________
___ Press Announcement: Magazine: _______________________________
___ NCSA Mailing
___ OTHER (Please explain):
I'd like more information:
Please send me : o NCSA Membership Information
o InfoSecurity Resource Catalog
NCSA, 10 South Courthouse Ave., Carlisle, PA 17013
Phone : 717-258-1816 Fax : 717-243-8642
EMail: 74774.1326@compuserve.com
**********************************************************************
IMPORTANT NOTICE!
=================
STReport International OnLine Magazine is available every week for your
reading pleasure on DELPHI. STReport's readers are invited to join DELPHI
and become a part of an extremely friendly community of enthusiastic
computer users there.
SIGNING UP WITH DELPHI
======================
Using a personal computer and modem, members worldwide access
DELPHI services via a local phone call
JOIN --DELPHI
--------------
Via modem, dial up DELPHI at 1-800-695-4002
then...
When connected, press RETURN once or twice
and...
At Password: type STREPORT and press RETURN.
DELPHI's 20/20 Advantage Plan
20 Hours for Only $20!
-----------------------------
Advantage Members have always enjoyed the lowest DELPHI access rates
available. On the new 20/20 Advantage Plan, members receive their first 20
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OnLine or find some other diversion, don't worry because additional usage
is only $1.80 per hour.
20/20 Advantage rates apply for access via SprintNet or Tymnet from within
the continental United States during home time or via direct dial around
the clock. Home Time is from 6pm to 6am weekdays. Access during business
time carries a surcharge of $9 per hour. These rates apply for most
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are clearly marked with a "$" sign.
Who is eligible to take advantage of the plan? Any DELPHI member in good
standing. Applications are reviewed and subject to approval by Delphi
Internet Services Corporation.
It's easy to join. If you meet the eligibility requirements, you can apply
OnLine -- at any time -- for membership in the DELPHI 20/20 Advantage
Plan. Your membership becomes active at 4 a.m. Eastern Time on the first
billing day of the following month.
The $20 charge will be billed to you at the beginning of the month to
which it applies. Any portion of the 20 hours not used in any month does
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Advantage rates may be changed with 30 days notice given OnLine.
TRY DELPHI FOR $1 AN HOUR!
For a limited time, you can become a trial member of DELPHI, and receive 5
hours of evening and weekend access during this month for only $5. If
you're not satisfied, simply cancel your account before the end of the
calendar month with no further obligation. If you keep your account
active, you will automatically be enrolled in DELPHI's 10/4 Basic Plan,
where you can use up to 4 weekend and evening hours a month for a minimum
$10 monthly charge, with additional hours available at $3.96. But hurry,
this special trial offer will expire soon! To take advantage of this
limited offer, use your modem to dial 1-800-365-4636. Press <RET> once or
twice. When you get the Password: prompt, type IP26 and press <RET> again.
Then, just answer the questions and within a day or two, you'll officially
be a member of DELPHI!
DELPHI-It's the BEST Value and getting BETTER all the time!
-* ANNOUNCING: DELPHI INTERNET JET v2.009 *-
--------------------------------------
Windows-based graphic interface for the otherwise text-only Delphi online
service. In addition to providing the user with a graphic interface,
Delphi Internet Jet can be configured to automatically gather Delphi
Internet e-mail and forum messages, and place them into a QWK packet for
the user's existing QWK mail reader! Complete instructions for setup,
operation, Delphi membership, and a FREE five hour trial included in the
INTJET.TXT file.
************************************************************
ATARI/JAG SECTION (III)
=======================
Dana Jacobson, Editor
> From the Atari Editor's Desk "Saying it like it is!"
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Spring is near, or should be real soon. There's something about
this month that makes one want to get through it quickly so the warm
temperatures of April get here. I think we should skip this month;
it's boring!
Atari shows are picking up again, next month, north of the border
this time. The folks at TAF are putting the finishing touches on their
show; and it looks to be a terrific one (see details below). I wish
that it were going to be a little closer; and I'd like to have a little
extra cash to afford to go. Alas, it doesn't appear that either will
happen! We're looking forward to hearing the reports from this show in
a few weeks.
Well, let's get on with the show - I'm rather speechless this
week, for some strange reason.
Until next time...
__________________________________________
> DMC NewsWire STR InfoFile Line Art, version 1.5
"""""""""""""""""""""""""
~~ NEWS RELEASE ~~ NEWS RELEASE ~~ NEWS RELEASE ~~ NEWS RELEASE ~~
March 2, 1995 For further information, contact:
Toronto, Ontario, Canada Nathan Potechin - President
DMC Publishing
DMC announces Line Art 1.5 Tel: (905) 479-1880
for Calamus SL Fax: (905) 479-1882
************** Compuserve: 76004,2246
Delphi/GEnie: DMCPUBLISH
DMC, who bring you Calamus SL, the Internet: DMCPUBLISH@GENIE.GEIS.COM
premier desktop publishing program
on the Atari computer, is pleased to announce an upgrade to a most
valued member of the Calamus family, Line Art. Line Art, version 1.5, is
now available.
The Line Art module is an advanced vector editing tool that
combines features found in both the Vector Graphic module and Outline Art
3.0, and then some. The Line Art module is the definitive tool for
creating and editing vector graphics without leaving Calamus SL.
Line Art features the creation of graphic primitives, blends, text
objects, paths and transformation nets which allow the distortion of
objects using these nets. Vector objects can be created by using either
the included vector editor or one of the Calamus primitives.
New primitives include: lines, outlines and circular segments. The
vector objects can also be defined using a variety of writing modes which
include outline on/off, fill on/off, and EOR for intersecting paths. You
can also define corners as either bevelled or sharp. Objects can also be
defined as color blends, allowing the transformation and rotation of
these objects by using the functions in the blends command area.
The types of blends include horizontal, vertical, rectangular corner
origin blend, circular and transformational blend with starting and
ending angles as well as starting and ending colors (as well as a
definable transition color). Text can be made to follow paths inside or
outside and to include/exclude the kerning values in the font or allow
manual adjustment of the character spacing. You may also justify text
left, right or center and change the text direction. The text may then be
converted to a path object for further manipulation.
New Features now available in Line Art, Version 1.5
---------------------------------------------------
Line Art, version 1.5, contains a number of new features that should
excite our Calamus SL customers; the new Toolbox type alignment
functions, for use in both creation and editing of vector objects, is one
example. Line Art's new Toolbox command group includes relative
positioning in both absolute and relative measurement options and more.
The gradient fill section has been improved in both speed and
functionality. In terms of features you can now change the angle of
gradient fill with real time preview for any of FOUR gradient types:
circular, rectangular, linear and the new conical style.
Here is a partial list of the new features in Line Art 1.5:
1. Any objects, text paths or groups can now be filled with a
gradient. The gradients can be viewed as new fill patterns.
2. New options for gradients: angle of gradient, offset of the start
and end, and position of the gradient in the vector object.
3. Conical gradient pattern added to linear, circular and rectangular.
4. You can also move the origin point on either X or Y axis. For
linear gradients, you can move the left or right edge IN or OUT of
the object. This is like "windowing" the gradient pattern.
5. For the radial gradients, the center of the gradient can be moved
anywhere on the X or Y axis. The same is true for the conical
gradient.
6. Uniframes, i.e.; StarScreened frames, can now be used inside vector
objects.
7. Exact placement with enhanced Toolbox options plus the ability to
move objects forward and backward.
8. Objects can be automatically sized to the same width or height.
9. Objects can be sorted and placed with even horizontal or vertical
spacing.
10. Objects can be placed along a selected path.
11. All Toolbox functions have UNDO.
12. The object alignment functions are straightforward: Edge Alignment,
Center Alignment plus relative positioning (object to object).
13. The new functions include instant matching of height or width for one
or more objects. You can also Distribute Objects Horizontally or
Vertically with a group of three or more objects.
The Line Art Module costs US $150.00, $210.00 Cdn. For those of you
that already own Line Art, version 1.0, upgrade to version
1.5, for US $50.00, $70.00 Cdn. Place your order today.
Note: You must have the latest version of Calamus SL (Oct. 94) in order
to use this or any other new module.
~~ NEWS RELEASE ~~ NEWS RELEASE ~~ NEWS RELEASE ~~ NEWS RELEASE ~~
March 2, 1995 For further information, contact:
Toronto, Ontario, Canada Nathan Potechin - President
DMC Publishing
DMC announces the PhotoFX Tel: (905) 479-1880
Module for Calamus SL Fax: (905) 479-1882
********************* Compuserve: 76004,2246
Delphi/GEnie: DMCPUBLISH
DMC, who bring you Calamus SL, the Internet: DMCPUBLISH@GENIE.GEIS.COM
premier desktop publishing program
on the Atari computer, is pleased to announce a new member in the family.
The newest addition to the Calamus SL family of modules, PhotoFX is now
available.
This new module allows you to apply special effect filters to images
from within Calamus. Four filters, for use in the Calamus PhotoFX Module,
come standard; Sharpen/Blur, Effect, Emboss and Generic (Matrix).
Sharpen/Blur allows you to increase the detail or to Blur the currently
selected image.
The Effects filter creates a variety of special effects such as
texturise, exposure and image streaking. The effects will vary depending
on the image.
The Emboss module will create an emboss affect on any image.
The Generic Matrix filter is based on a user definable mathematical
matrix that allows you to define your own filters. It is quite powerful
and allows an enormous amount of possibilities. Six Matrix filters are
included.
Sample images with some PhotoFX's applied to them, have been uploaded to
a few of the main bulletin boards.
Your cost for the new PhotoFX Module for Calamus SL is US $50.00,
$70.00 Cdn.
Note: You must have the latest version of Calamus SL (Oct. 94) to use
this or any other new module.
> TAF Show Update! STR AtariFest InfoFile! - ACE '95 Is Almost Here!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
**** SPECIAL VISITORS INFORMATION ****
JAGUAR ALERT!!
******************************************************
NEWS RELEASE 15: THE TORONTO ATARI FEDERATION PRESENTS - ACE '95!!
******************************************************
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
_/_/
_/_/ _/_/_/_/ _/_/_/_/_/
_/_/ _/_/_/_/_/_/ _/_/_/_/_/_/ Software Demos!
_/_/ _/_/ _/_/ _/_/ Hardware Demos!
_/_/ _/_/_/_/_/_/ _/_/_/_/_/ Membership!
_/_/ _/_/_/_/_/_/ _/_/_/_/_/ Phoenix Newsletter!
_/_/ _/_/ _/_/ _/_/ 16/32 Bit Library!
_/_/ _/_/ _/_/ _/_/ Monthly Meetings!
_/_/ _/ _/_/ _/ Flea Market!
_/ Seminars!
Raffles! BBS!
#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*# Support! GRAPHICS!
Official Sponsor of ACE'95! SPREADSHEETS! DATABASES!
#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*# DESKTOP PUBLISHING!
TELECOMMUNICATIONS! MIDI!
WORDPROCESSING! MUCH MORE!
~~~ THE TORONTO ATARI FEDERATION ~~~
Largest Atari User Group in North America!
~~~ (416) CALL-TAF (225-5823) For Recorded Information ~~~
~~~ TAF Online BBS (416) 421-8999 ~~~
~~~ CALL 416-752-2744 For ACE'95 Information ~~~
=========================================================
ACE '95 *** IS ONLY 4 WEEKS AWAY *** ACE '95
=========================================================
LLLLLLLL EVERYTHING GREAT UNDER THE ATARI SUN! LLLLLLLL
JAGUAR ALERT!!
*******
FEATURE EXHIBITOR > Oregon Research Associates of Tigard Oregon
*******
Bob Luneski and company are the culprits
responsible for such pieces of genius as
Diamond Back 3 & Diamond Edge - probably the
two most popular and well known items in the
Atari market, for Hard Drive maintenance!
And as if that isn't enough, Bob is also the
man who persevered to bring us Papyrus, the
entire HiSoft line of software, a slew of
topnotch MIDI & Video software (Breakthru,
VideoMaster and more!), in addition to his
long-standing reputation for support and
customer service. ACE'95 will be the best
chance many of us will ever have to talk to
'The Man' himself! Do it! Come to ACE'95 and
look for the sign in Booth #6 that says,
'Genius At Work!'
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
ACE'95 Visitors and Exhibitors will be treated to all that
Toronto has to offer (and it's a *LOT*!). Everyone will be also
be treated to an Exhibition taking place in a really bright,
modern, intimate venue. As a matter of fact, once you arrive at
the North York Civic Center you've got the run of a fine complex:
Shopping, Restaurants, Subway (did you know you can visit most of
downtown Toronto without ever going outside? It'll take you
about a week to see everything, mind you; Toronto is a *big*
place!), Theatres ... and of course MEMORIAL HALL & ACE'95!!
*******
FEATURE EXHIBITOR > Branch Always Software of Bellevue, Washington
*******
GEMulator has saved lives! It is a little
known fact ... but it's true! Far too many
people have spent hour after agonizing hour,
toiling away over a balky DOS box, and then
found euphoric surcease (just in the nick of
time, naturally!), by booting TOS from good
old GEMulator. Hmmm ... GEMulator may have
been 'around' for awhile, but it sure as
heck isn't 'old'! As a matter of fact,
GEMulator 4 will be at ACE'95 in all its
hi-speed glory. Darek Mihocka will be
on-hand of course (Booth #17), and he'll be
providing expert advice on taming the Intel
beast with a little Motorola horse sense!
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
The *GREATEST*ATARI*EXHIBITION*IN*YEARS* is happening on April
1st & 2nd, 1995, in TORONTO!! The ACE '95 Exhibitors List is
impressive ... and there are still MORE to come!!
LLLL Gribnif Software!
LLLLL TOAD Computers!
LLLLLL Branch Always Software!
LLLLLLL Cybercube Research (Cyrel)!
LLLLLLLL DMC Publishing!
LLLLLLLLL Scarborough Computers!
LLLLLLLLLL Missionware Software!
LLLLLLLLLLL ICD INC/4Play/Black Cat Designs!
LLLLLLLLLLLL It's All Relative!
LLLLLLLLLLLLL ABC Solutions!
LLLLLLLLLLLLLL Esquimalt Digital Logic (OMEN)!
LLLLLLLLLLLLLLL GEnie Information Services!
LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL Suzy B's Software (& CDs)!
LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL chro_Magic!
LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL Clear Thinking!
LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL Schauzmoll Software (The first GUI BBS)!
LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL Anodyne Software (ExtenDOS)!
LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL Oregon Research Associates!
LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL Computer Direct! (DirecTT030 & an
LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL enormous lineup of Atari products!)
LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL Binary Sounds!
LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL Fine Tooned Engineering (MIO2, Sweet 16)
LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL Compuworld (Service, Parts, Upgrades!)
LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL Encore Music (Falcon MIDI systems!)
LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL Wizztronics (The Falcon Rack, Barracuda!)
LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL Steinberg/Jones (everybody knows what they do!)
*******
CHECK OUT OUR World Wide Web PAGES: http://www.io.org/taf.html
******* or http://www.io.org/ace.html
*******
FEATURE EXHIBITOR > Clear Thinking of Ann Arbor, Michigan
*******
Who is Craig Harvey? I mean really? He
programs this little text editor called
Edit Plus. It's only claims to fame are that
it is probably in use on half the Atari
computers in North America, and that it is a
fascinating, complex, intuitive and *useful*
text editor. Every time you look at Edit
Plus, it seems to reveal yet another handy
feature! Craig has an encyclopedic knowledge
of his superb software, and he will sell it
to you, teach it to you and support it for
you. All you have to do is walk up to him
(he'll be in Booth #16a) and say, "Hey
Craig, show me the light! I want Edit Plus!"
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
How'd you like to use the GROLIER'S CD-ROM ENCYCLOPEDIA on your
Atari .... hmmm? SARA-CD for Grolier's will be debuting at
ACE'95! It's Great!! It's Incredible!! It Works!! It will be up
and running in the ABC Solutions Booth (#5)!! Replace three
shelves worth of Americana, Brittanica or Funk & Wagnall's, with
one little CD!! This is truly amazing stuff ... stay tuned for
more details ...
=-=-=-=-=-=-
ACE'95 will feature continuous, hour-on-the-hour SEMINARS and
LECTURES. We'll be posting a Seminar schedule very soon!!
=-=-=-=-=-=-
A fabulous lineup of Door Prizes, Creativity Contest Prizes
.... and the ACE'95 Grand Prize!
=-=-=-=-=-=-
MIDI, DTP, Wordprocessing, Graphics, Power Computing, Software
Libraries, Utilities, Accessories, Databases, Spreadsheets,
Custom Solutions, Games, Educational, Internet, BBS, Networks,
Accelerators, Emulators, JAGUAR Stations, User Group Center,
INCREDIBLE SALE PRICES, Software, Hardware, and EVERYTHING you
need to get the VERY BEST out of your Atari!
================================================
Getting to ACE'95 is *easy*. Toronto is directly
accessed by Highway 401 or the Queen Elizabeth Way,
or Highway 400/69. Crossing the US/Canada border
at Detroit, Buffalo, Niagara Falls, Ft. Erie,
Ogdensburg, Kingston, etc., will lead you directly
to Highway 401 or the Queen Elizabeth Way. Take the
Yonge St. Ramp north off the 401 and drive to 5110
Yonge St. (5 lights) If you take the Queen Elizabeth
Way, follow the signs to get to highway 401. *ANY*
AAA or CAA or other Motor League can provide you with
a map of Toronto, Ontario & Canada. Please call us
if you have any trouble! Pearson International
Airport is only 15 minutes away! Toronto Transit
subway access is direct, too - there's a subway
stop at the Civic Center!
================================================
BOOK YOUR HOTEL & YOUR TICKETS IN ADVANCE! Call
or e-mail for info ... for INDIVIDUALS, USER GROUPS,
ORGANIZATIONS, DEVELOPERS & DEALERS! The Show Site
(North York Civic Center, Memorial Hall Exhibition
Facility) has hotel, shopping, restaurants and more!
NOVOTEL: $89 Cdn PER NIGHT
(single OR double occupancy)
** Call Novotel direct @ 416-733-2929 and ASK FOR
A ROOM WITH THE TORONTO ATARI FEDERATION GROUP! **
ACE'95 TICKETS: $6 PER DAY
$10 WEEKEND PASS
CALL 416-752-2744 FOR HOTEL & TICKET RESERVATIONS
================================================
Meet Dan Wilga, Darek Mihocka, Bob Luneski, Peter
Zalesak, John Trautschold, Craig Harvey, Nathan
Potechin, Mario Georgiou, Greg Kopchak, Al Fasoldt,
Rick Ladage, Jim Fouch, David & Jennifer Troy,
Michael Burkley, Roger Burrows, DARLAH, Craig
Carmichael, Tom Harker, Chris Krowchuck, Jim
Collins, Ralf Dowich, Shawn Tedder, Mike Wilhelm,
Mike Hohman, Christian Ernst, Michael Snape, Ray
Williams, Stuart Watt, Stephen Christian, Steve
Cohen, Jeff Neveu, Sonny Ang, Bill Annand and
Michael Buffer ... well you never know, Michael
*might* show up: LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLET'S GET READY
TO COMPUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUTE!! There will be
plenty more of the greatest dealers, developers
& supporters Atari users have seen in years!
================================================
*CALL US* 416-752-2744 or 416-225-5823 *CALL US*
ACE'95 is being held at:
North York Civic Center
Memorial Hall Exhibition Facility
5110 Yonge St. (at Parkhome Ave.)
Toronto, Canada
April 1-2, 1995
Saturday 9AM - 6PM
Sunday 9AM - 5PM
~~ Howard Carson, ACE'95 Chief Organizer ~~~
E-Mail: GEnie - H.Carson1
Atarinet - Howard. Carson@51:5/6
Internet - h.carson1@genie.geis.com
howard.carson@canrem.com
hcarson@io.org
TAF Online - Howard. Carson
=end=
________________________________________
> ExtenDOS Update! STR NewsFile! - ExtenDOS News from Anodyne Software!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
From Roger Burrows.........
Well, I was a bit lazy about supplying this a few days ago, and then I
got another request for the same info, so I decide to create a summary
of ExtenDOS And thanks again to those folks who prodded me into
producing this!
Roger Burrows / Anodyne Software
ExtenDOS v1.22:
Supported hardware:
Atari systems: ST, STe, Mega, TT, and Falcon. The ST/STe/Mega
require a host adapter that can pass the entire
SCSI command set, such as the ICD AdSCSI+ or Link.
CD-ROM drives:
Multisession photoCD:
Apple CD-300/CD-300+/PowerCD
Chinon 535
Sony 561
NEC 38/74-1/84-1/210/3Xe/3Xi/3Xp
Plextor/Texel 3028/5028/4plex
Toshiba 3401/4101
Single-session photoCD:
Chinon 435
NEC 37/74/84
Plextor/Texel 3024/5024
Toshiba 3301
No photoCD:
Toshiba 3201
NEC 25/35/72/77/80/82
Sony 541/6211/8022
Any fully SCSI-compatible drive
Supported software:
Operating environments: TOS, MultiTOS, Geneva, and Mag!X.
CD-ROM file formats: ISO9660 and High Sierra.
Other features:
Configurable cache.
Updates to ExtenDOS (bug fixes, enhancements) are typically
distributed electronically at no charge.
The next update will support more drives, including Chinon 525,
Mediavision Reno, Sony 55S, Toshiba 3501/5201.
Extendos v1.22 lists at $29.95(North America).
ExtenDOS Pro v2.0B:
Supported hardware:
Atari systems: ST, STe, Mega, TT, and Falcon. The ST/STe/Mega
require a host adapter that can pass the entire
SCSI command set, such as the ICD AdSCSI+ or Link.
CD-ROM drives:
Multisession photoCD:
Apple CD-300/CD-300+/PowerCD
Chinon 535
Sony 561
NEC 38/74-1/84-1/210/3Xe/3Xi/3Xp
Plextor/Texel 3028/5028
Toshiba 3401/4101
Single-session photoCD:
Chinon 435
NEC 37/74/84
Plextor/Texel 3024/5024
Toshiba 3301
No photoCD:
Toshiba 3201
NEC 25/35/72/77/80/82
Sony 541/6211/8022
Supported software:
Operating environments: TOS, MultiTOS, Geneva, and Mag!X.
CD-ROM file formats: ISO9660 and High Sierra.
Other features:
Configurable cache.
Updates to ExtenDOS Pro (bug fixes, enhancements) are typically
distributed electronically at no charge.
Audio support for all the above drives (except the Chinon 435 at
this time). This support includes an audioCD player (both as
program and accessory) and the capability of controlling the CD-ROM
via a user-written program.
The next update, due out in April 1995, will include the following
features:
An installation/reconfiguration program.
Support for multi-LUN drives (changers) such as the Pioneer 60x.
Support for more drives, including the Chinon 525, Mediavision
Reno, NEC 4x, Pioneer 602X/604X, Sony 55S, Toshiba 3501/5201.
Audio support for any SCSI-2 compatible drive.
Extendos Pro lists at $39.95(North America). Owners of ExtenDOS may
upgrade to ExtenDOS Pro at a special rate (currently $15 in North
America).
From now till April 1, get a CD starter pack of ExtenDOS Pro and three
CD's to get you going for $39.99 US, Postpaid, from It's All Relative,
2233 Keeven Lane, Florissant MO 63031.
Been waiting to get a CD drive? Better start shopping around.
The CD starter pack requires a Kodak Photo CD ready drive.
__________________________________
> Obsession & Vintage Games Update! - New at Systems For Tomorrow!
"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
SFT Contact Info
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Orders (800)875-4943
Info (816)353-1221
FAX (816)252-3611
EMail kkordes1@delphi.com
Mail 11034 East 40 Highway
Independence MO 64055
USA
Obsession
~~~~~~~~~
There is a point beyond Addiction......... Obsession!
Obsession is Unique Developments incredible pinball game for the
STE and Falcon brought to us by chro_Magic. Obsession contains 4
tables for your enjoyment (Aquatic Adventure, X-ile Zone, Balls &
Bats, and Desert Run!) Obsession provides realistic ball
movement, over 40 colors on screen, super fast scrolling, and
more...
Obsession has already received a massive 98% rating from ST
Review and 94% from ST Format. Buy this game today!
System Requirements: STe/MegaSTE/Falcon Only (Bummer,no TT)
1MB RAM
Color Monitor
Obsession $39.99
Mailing Manager ST Pro
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Ultimate Dedicated Mailing List Program For Your Atari
ST/TT/Falcon.
Keep track of Friends, Family, and Customer Mailing Lists.
Provides powerful printing and report features including Form
Letters, Address Labels, Phone number listings, and more...
Other features: supports subscriptions, 28 flags, Extended Notes,
and more...
System Requirements: ST/TT/Falcon
1MB RAM
Mailing Manager ST Pro $49.99
Atari 7800 Deal
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
We now have a limited quantity of Atari 7800 Pro Systems. The
7800 Pro System Allows you to play both Atari 7800 and 2600 games!
Each system comes with the Base Unit, two joysticks, Pole
Position Game Cartridge, Power Supply, and TV connections!
As an added bonus all 7800 and 2600 Cartridges are 25% OFF normal
pricing when purchased with a System!
Atari 7800 Pro System $29.99
Atari 7800 Games
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
All 7800 games are $7.99! Buy 3 or more and take 20% OFF!
Joust Commando Crossbow Winter Games
One-on-One Fight Night Mario Bros. Summer Games
Scrapyard Dog Donkey Kong Centipede Hat Trick
TD Football Ballblazer Crack'ed Mean 18 Golf
Xevious Ninja Golf Robotron 2084 Jinks
Mat Mania Ace of Aces Super Huey Asteroids
Ikari Warriors Dark Chambers RS Baseball
Atari 2600 Games
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
All 2600 games are $3.99! Buy 3 or more and take 20% OFF!
Off the Wall Desert Falcon Millipede Yars' Revenge
Kangaroo Dig Dug Mouse Trap Football
Battlezone Jungle Hunt Venture Galaxian
Ms. Pac-Man Jr. Pac-Man Pac-Man Defender II
Space Invaders
Orders
~~~~~~
orders (800)875-4943 Monday-Friday 10AM-7PM
Saturday 10AM-5PM
info/orders (816)353-1221 Monday-Friday 10AM-7PM (central)
Saturday 10AM-5PM
FAX (816)252-3611
mail to: Systems For Tomorrow
11034 East 40 Highway
Independence MO 64055
internet: kkordes1@delphi.com
We accept MasterCard and Visa. COD orders add $5.
All prices are subject to change without notice. Some items may be
available in limited quantities only. All prices are in US dollars.
---------------Order Form-------------------------------------------
Name: ______________________________________
Address:______________________________________
______________________________________
______________________________________
Phone: ______________________________________
Payment:
O COD
O PrePAID
O Credit Card #_____________________________ Exp _____
Card holder signature:_______________________________
Note: For your protection, we require that all credit card
orders must be shipped to the billing address for the
card.
Item # Description Price Qnty Extension
______ _____________________ ______ ______ _______
______ _____________________ ______ ______ _______
______ _____________________ ______ ______ _______
______ _____________________ ______ ______ _______
______ _____________________ ______ ______ _______
______ _____________________ ______ ______ _______
______ _____________________ ______ ______ _______
______ _____________________ ______ ______ _______
Sub Total _______
Tax - MO residents add 6% _______
COD orders add $5 _______
Shipping _______
Total _______
Fax order to - (816) 252-3611
Mail order to - SFT - 11034 East 40 Highway - Independence MO 64055
__________________________________________________
> STR NewsPlus
""""""""""""
-/- Online 'Decency' Bill Targeted -/-
U.S. Sen. Jim Exon's proposed "Communications Decency Act" -- which
would impose $100,000 fines on anyone who uses computers "to annoy,
abuse, threaten, or harass" -- is being viewed with alarm by online
free speech activists.
When the Nebraska Democrat introduced his bill Feb. 1, he said it
necessary to "extend the standards of decency which have protected
telephone users to new telecommunications devices." (A companion bill
has been introduced in the House by Rep. Timothy Johnson, D-S.D.)
Associated Press writer Elizabeth Weise reports some computer users
and free speech activists are gearing up for a fight against what they
fear are the first in a "flood of U.S. laws designed to control access
to the freewheeling global computer network," Internet.
Says Weise, "while Exon wants to keep the Internet from becoming a
red light district, many computer users see his proposal as a misguided
attempt to control the global network of computer connections. ... As
word of the proposal spreads, just about every watchdog group on the
Internet has come together, circulating electronic petitions and urging
computer users to lobby Congress against the bill."
Among the opponents are computer industry groups, the Electronic
Frontier Foundation, the ACLU and People for the American Way.
Says AP, "Many computer users acknowledge that some regulation of
cyberspace is necessary. And while some say the original creators of
material should be held liable for its content, most argue that
responsibility lies with anyone who takes the effort to obtain it from
the Internet. After all, they argue, the Internet is different from
television or the telephone."
Shabbir J. Safdar of the Voters Telecommunications Watch in New York
told the wire service, "It's not as if I'm sitting at home eating dinner
and the salesman calls me. I have to go looking for whatever I want to
find. If it offends me, I should stop going looking for it."
Exon's bill would hold responsible anyone who "transmits or
otherwise makes available" the offensive words or images. Opponents
argue that would make universities, companies and other Internet access
providers responsible for screening everything from public postings to
private email.
Safdar said the proposed law "seems to make everyone in between
liable as well, not just the end points. Everybody there is sueable."
And Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information
Center, said requiring U.S. providers of access to the Internet to
police everything that flows through their wires would violate the
very freedom that has made this global exchange of information so
powerful.
But Exon spokesman Russ Rader told Weise that's not the intention,
and that the senator is willing to refine the language of the bill
(although that has not yet been done).
Still, the broader problem, say the opponents, is that lawmakers
don't really understand what the Internet is and how it works.
Weise comments, "No one has quite figured out yet where the Internet
fits. The service providers who give access to it at times look like all
three -- sometimes a phone company, sometimes a radio network, sometimes
a magazine publisher. Rotenberg also points out that the Internet is a
global network. If U.S. computer networks are required to cut off
contact with overseas systems which don't meet our standards for
informational purity, America will be left out of the global information
exchange."
-/- School to Limit Usenet Access -/-
The University of Pittsburgh has become the latest school to
propose limiting Usenet access. The university says it will establish a
standing committee of faculty, students and others to help determine which
of the more than 10,000 Usenet news groups on the Internet will be carried
on its computer network.
The school says the move is one aspect of a new policy that will
review the use of university computer resources to access, display,
post or print materials that may have obscene or sexually explicit
content. The school notes that the policy addresses the need to provide
appropriate protection for First Amendment rights, while at the same
time adhering to federal and state statutes governing obscenity and
sexually explicit material.
The policy calls for the suspension of computing privileges as well
as the possible imposition of additional sanctions upon anyone who is
found to have employed university computer resources to use obscene or
sexually explicit material in a way that violates university policies
and guidelines.
-/- Delrina Buys BBS Company -/-
Delrina Corp. says it has entered into a purchase agreement to
acquire CRS Online Ltd., a 10,000-subscriber computer bulletin board
system (BBS) in Canada.
Delrina notes that the acquisition is part of its long term strategy
to expand its presence in online communications and services, and will
allow the company to test the marketability of new communications
offerings. Terms of the deal weren't disclosed.
Delrina's plans include further expansion of CRS Online, which
currently employs 13 people. "The key to success in the world of online
communications is the ability to simplify the way users access and use
services," says Mark Skapinker, Delrina's president. "Clearly, stand-alone
products can only go so far to deliver easy, flexible and robust
connectivity without some integration between the software the customer
uses and the point at which he or she makes a connection."
"The acquisition of CRS Online will enable Delrina to build and test
the type of integrated online communications solutions that will appeal
to a broader marketplace," adds Ron Close, vice president of Delrina's
communication services business unit. "In addition, we will gain a staff
with proven operational and strategic expertise in the area of online
communications."
CRS Online, based in Toronto, Ontario, can trace its roots back to
the early 1980s. It provides subscribers with a centralized information
source in which users can exchange electronic mail, retrieve files or
participate in online group events.
Delrina publishes software in the fax, data and voice communications,
electronic forms, and consumer software markets.
-/- Fujitsu, CompuServe Team Up -/-
Worlds Away -- an animated, cartoon-like service where online
visitors can meet and create personalities in a virtual world -- is
being jointly created by Japan's Fujitsu Ltd. and CompuServe Inc.
Reporting from the PC Forum conference in Phoenix, Arizona, the
Reuter News Service quotes Fujitsu officials as saying the service now
is in testing and will be available later this year.
Says Reuters, "Unlike the traditional chat rooms in online services,
where visitors exchange instant messages on the screen in a group,
Worlds Away has graphics and animation so users can create a setting
like a cafe or a living room. They can also play with props or objects,
such as a coffee cup."
Visitors also can create their own identities, called "avatars,"
and they can portray real personalities or create one, says the wire
service, adding, "With computer graphics users can convey facial
expressions and gestures and talk to one another with text and
comic-book-like thought balloons."
Reuters reports Worlds Away was designed by two former Lucas Films
designers who developed Habitat, the first graphical cyber community in
the 1980s. Fujitsu purchased the Habitat technology and introduced it
in Japan in 1989. Last year, Fujitsu formed a multimedia unit, called
Cultural Technologies, to re-engineer Habitat for the U.S. market.
The service is the first product of Fujitsu's Cultural Technologies
unit, based in San Jose, Calif., and it is being demonstrated at the
Phoenix conference.
-/- Home PC Market Strong in U.S. -/-
A new marketing study says the home PC market is considerably more
developed in the United States than in major countries of Europe and
Japan.
"Not only do a much higher percentage of homes have personal
computers, but the use of emerging consumer applications such as
education, entertainment, and online services are considerably more
developed in the United States," says a statement from International
Data Corp., which released results of its new worldwide consumer
survey.
Based on some 7,000 interviews with consumers in the United States,
Western Europe and Japan, IDC's Global Home Market Survey found:
-:- When home computers provided by employers or schools are
included, some 37 percent of U.S. households now have one or more
personal computers.
-:- This compares with 28 percent in Germany, 24 percent in the
United Kingdom, 15 percent in France, and less than 10 percent in Japan.
(Northern European markets such as Denmark and the Netherlands have
personal computer usage closer to, but still lower than the U.S. level.)
-:- The current gaps show no sign of closing in 1995, because roughly
10 percent of homes without a PC are seriously considering a PC
acquisition in 1995 in most of the countries surveyed.
-:- Apple computer has the largest installed base of home personal
computers, and will be the largest supplier of PCs to the home in 1995.
"In addition to different PC penetration levels" among different
countries, says the statement from the researchers' Framingham,
Massachusetts, headquarters, "home PC usage patterns also differ
sharply. Although job-related work is the most important home
application in all of the countries surveyed, U.S. consumers are much
more interested in education, entertainment, home finance, and online
services compared to consumers across Europe."
For instance, 47 percent of U.S. homes with a PC also have a modem,
compared to just 13 percent in Europe. Similar details of the Japanese
results will be released shortly.
____________________________________________
JAGUAR SECTION
==============
Ultra Vortex! CATscan BBS!
Internet News! And More!
> From the Editor's Controller - Playin' it like it is!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
I believe that the flood gates are about to burst open, any day
now. We know that Atari's 4th quarter financial report is expected to
be released next week. What better way to top off a positive report
(if that's going to happen!) with a number of announcements for new
products?!
Syndicate and Troy Aikman Football are out, with little fanfare.
All of the sudden, we just see some messages from those who have seen
or bought them. No announcements, which was strange. But the
important thing is, they're out.
We're guessing that we'll see an announcement for the CatBox and
the Jaguar CD-player shortly, also. Those, plus a number of new games
(both cart and CD), seem to be imminent. Hmmm, did I say something
above about March being a boring month? Maybe I should retract that
comment, for this year!
Well, let's get to the news and information for this week! It's
quiet right now, but our crystal ball tells us that the next few weeks
are going to be very interesting. As usual, we'll be here to bring it
all to you!
Until next time...
________________________________________
> Jaguar Catalog STR InfoFile - What's currently available, what's
""""""""""""""""""""""""""" coming out.
Current Available Titles ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
CAT # TITLE MSRP DEVELOPER/PUBLISHER
J9000 Cybermorph $59.99 Atari Corp.
J9006 Evolution:Dino Dudes $49.99 Atari Corp.
J9005 Raiden $49.99 FABTEK, Inc/Atari Corp.
J9001 Trevor McFur/
Crescent Galaxy $49.99 Atari Corp.
J9010 Tempest 2000 $59.95 Llamasoft/Atari Corp.
J9028 Wolfenstein 3D $69.95 id/Atari Corp.
JA100 Brutal Sports FtBall $69.95 Telegames
J9008 Alien vs. Predator $69.99 Rebellion/Atari Corp.
J9029 Doom $69.99 id/Atari Corp.
J9036 Dragon: Bruce Lee $59.99 Atari Corp.
J9003 Club Drive $59.99 Atari Corp.
J9007 Checkered Flag $69.99 Atari Corp.
J9012 Kasumi Ninja $69.99 Atari Corp.
J9042 Zool 2 $59.99 Atari Corp
J9020 Bubsy $49.99 Atari Corp
J9026 Iron Soldier $59.99 Atari Corp
J9060 Val D'Isere Skiing $59.99 Atari Corp.
Cannon Fodder Virgin
Syndicate Ocean
Troy Aikman Ftball Williams
Available Soon ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
CAT # TITLE MSRP DEVELOPER/PUBLISHER
CatBox $69.95 ICD
Hover Strike $59.99 Atari
Jaguar CD-ROM $149.99 Atari
Hardware and Peripherals ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
CAT # TITLE MSRP MANUFACTURER
J8001 Jaguar (complete) $189.99 Atari Corp.
J8001 Jaguar (no cart) $159.99 Atari Corp.
J8904 Composite Cable $19.95
J8901 Controller/Joypad $24.95 Atari Corp.
J8905 S-Video Cable $19.95
__________________________________________
> Jaguar Developers STR InfoFile - Current Developer Lists & Titles
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Game Title Date Game Type MSRP Publisher
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Air Cars 1Q/95 Racing $59.99 Midnight Ent.
Alien vs Predator NOW Role Play/Adventure $69.99 Atari
Arena Football 1Q/95 Sports TBD V Reel
Assault 1Q/95 Action/Combat $59.99 Midnight Ent.
Barkley Basketball 2Q/95 Sports TBD Atari
Battlemorph 1Q/95 Flying/Action $59.99 Atari
Battle Wheels 1Q/95 Racing/Combat TBD Beyond Games
Blue Lightning (CD) 1Q/95 Flying/Action $59.99 Atari
Brett Hull Hockey (CD) 2Q/95 Sports TBD Atari
Brutal Sports Football NOW Sports/Combat $69.99 Telegames
Bubsy NOW Action/Adventure $49.99 Atari
Burnout 1Q/95 Sports TBD Atari
Cannon Fodder NOW Action/Adventure Virgin
Checkered Flag NOW Racing $69.99 Atari
Club Drive NOW Racing $59.99 Atari
Creature Shock (CD) 1Q/95 Adventure/Sci-Fi TBD Atari/Virgin
Cybermorph NOW Flying/Action $59.99 Atari
Dactyl Joust 2Q/95 Action TBD Atari
Demolition Man 1Q/95 Action/Combat $59.99 Atari
Doom NOW Action/Combat $69.99 Atari
Double Dragon V 1Q/95 Action/Adventure $59.99 Williams
Dragon:Bruce Lee Story NOW Combat $59.99 Atari
Dragon Lair (CD) 1Q/95 Adventure TBD Ready Soft
Dreadnought (CD) 2Q/95 Adventure TBD Atari
Dungeon Depths 1Q/95 Action/Adventure $59.99 Midnight Ent.
Evolution: Dino Dudes NOW Puzzle/Adventure $49.99 Atari
Flashback 1Q/95 Action/Adventure TBD US Gold
Fight For Life 1Q/95 Combat TBD Atari
Hardball Baseball 2Q/95 Sports TBD Atari
Highlander (CD) 1Q/95 Action/Adventure $59.99 Atari
Horrorscope 1Q/95 Combat TBD V Reel
Hover Strike 1Q/95 Action/Combat $59.99 Atari
Iron Soldier NOW Action/Strategy $59.99 Atari
Jack Nicklaus Golf(CD) 2Q/95 Sports TBD Atari
Kasumi Ninja NOW Combat $69.99 Atari
Rage Rally 1Q/95 Racing TBD Atari
Raiden NOW Action/Adventure $49.99 Atari
Rayman 1Q/95 Action/Adventure TBD UBI Soft
Robinson Requiem 1Q/95 Adventure TBD Atari
Soccer Kid 1Q/95 Sports TBD Ocean
Space War 1Q/95 Action/Adventure $59.99 Atari
Star Raiders 1Q/95 Space Simulation TBD Atari
Syndicate NOW Simulation TBD Ocean
Tempest 2000 NOW Action/Adventure $59.99 Atari
Theme Park 1Q/95 Simulation TBD Ocean
Tiny Toon Adventures 1Q/95 Action/Adventure $59.99 Atari
Trevor McFur NOW Action/Adventure $49.99 Atari
Troy Aikman NFL Ftball NOW Sports $69.99 Williams
Ultimate Brain Games 1Q/95 Puzzle TBD Telegames
Ultra Vortex 1Q/95 Action/Adventure $69.99 Beyond Games
Val D'Isere Skiing... NOW Sports $59.99 Atari
White Men Can't Jump 1Q/95 Sports TBD TriMark
Wolfenstein 3D NOW Combat/Action $59.99 Atari
Zool2 NOW Action/Adventure $59.99 Atari
[Editor's note: Titles, scheduled release dates, and prices are
verified from Atari and Edelman Public Relations - all subject to
change]
_____________________________________________
> Jaguar Online STR InfoFile Online Users Growl & Purr!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""
CATnips... Jaguar notes from Don Thomas
First off, I apologize to anyone if I have missed your message lately.
I'm trying to do my best to keep up with E-Mail, but I haven't been in
the forums as much over the past couple of days. My attention is on
new BBS software recommended to me by Steve Kipker of Steve's
Software. Although, RATSoft is an unusual name for BBS software, it so
far seems to live up to Steve's enthusiasm.
My only setback is that there were (and are) a lot of features on
CATscan and I want to switch as many over I can in advance, such as
the dealer referral module, the T-shirt lottery, game descriptions,
download areas, etc. I am sorry to see my old BBS software (Michtron
BBS) go especially since I spent many hours writing scripts, but users
want higher baud rates and they are just not supported by the older
software.
I am pleased to report that my "code of silence" in the form a of a
non-disclosure agreement regarding the core Jaguar, it's price and
availability has been lifted. AS many of you have been discussing,
retailers are jockeying their inventories around while preparing for
the new base systems shipping over the next few weeks. Atari is
suggesting to dealers that the 64-bit Jaguar base unit (without a cart)
is a tremendous value at only $159.99. Of course, retailers may vary a
little as they ultimately set their own prices.
I'll let everyone know when CATscan is on the new software.
--Don Thomas
Atari Corporation
From Compuserve's Atari Gaming Forums, an update on Ultra Vortex:
Sb: #73218-#ULTRA VORTEX (ANY GOOD?)
Fm: Kris Johnson 73150,1553
To: Thomas A. Lenaway 76430,1263
> If Ultra Vortex controls like KN (which it's rumored to), I'm going
to lock the Jag away > and go find a system with some quality. <
For the record, Ultra Vortex controls rock! It's not KN controls with
a special moves button. More like MKII or SFII (i.e. A,A, HP or sweep
+ LP), Block is Away. The play is very fluid running at 30 fps. Between
8-10 special moves per characters + multiple fatalities per character.
Many hidden characters, 2 bosses, board fatalities, turbo play and
more!
The last review in DieHard GameFan stated that the controls were not
final! Why, because we had all the special moves on the keypad for
demo purposes.
UV should be out by April '95, we're just putting in the final sound FX
and tuning fatalities. It will be worth the wait!
-Kris @ Beyond Games
>R.G.V.A.! STR Internet InfoFile! - Atari Games Usenet Group to Change?
RFD: rec.games.video.atari reorganization
Newsgroup: rec.games.video.atari.digest
Status: Moderated
Distribution: World
Summary: New group intended for the discussion of video game
products currently produced, sold, or supported by the
company "Atari", and all associated peripherals and games
for said products. Includes renaming
rec.games.video.atari
to rec.games.video.atari.discuss and a unique moderation
procedure.
Proponent: <Chris K. Brown> ckb@mitre.org
REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION:
This is a formal request for discussion (RFD) for the creation of the
moderated newsgroup rec.games.video.atari.digest and the renaming of
rec.games.video.atari to rec.games.video.atari.discuss.
This request is being cross-posted to:
news.announce.newgroups
news.groups
rec.games.video.atari
rec.games.video.misc
alt.atari-jaguar.discussion
Follow-ups are directed to news.groups.
This formal request for discussion takes place because of the very low
"signal to noise" ratio on rec.games.video.atari. Discussion of
creating a moderated newsgroup has come up many times before, and has
been met with mixed results. This proposal attempts to address the
main issues that have appeared in previous discussions and propose a
solution acceptable to all.
Recently, the discussion has turned to seeing if such a group were to
be created, whether or not moderator(s) would be available. Several
volunteers have been identified. Selection of moderator(s) will
take place during the RFD period.
The charter of r.g.v.a.digest will be nearly identical to that of
r.g.v.a. The method of moderation is unique, and will be outlined in
the charter. In summary, it will set up a relationship between
r.g.v.a.digest and r.g.v.a(.discuss), where all articles posted to
the latter will be considered for posting to the former by the
moderator(s).
Guidance on this proposal has also came from group-advice@uunet.uu.net.
PROPOSAL:
The two parts of this proposal are INDEPENDENT and will be voted
on SEPARATELY.
Part 1 Create a newsgroup rec.games.video.atari.digest
------------------------------------------------------
Group: The proposed group is rec.games.video.atari.digest [moderated].
Distribution: World
Summary line: Discussion of Atari and current and future Atari video
game products.
Charter: rec.games.video.atari.digest [moderated] is for the
discussion of the Atari Corporation and current and future Atari video
games products, including related products that are to be used with or
by said Atari products. Specifically forbidden are discussion of
older Atari video game products (e.g. 2600, 5200, etc.) and Atari
computers (e.g. 400, 520ST, Falcon, etc.)
Appropriate material includes the Atari Jaguar FAQ, the Atari Lynx
FAQ, constructive discussion of the current video game hardware sold
by Atari (e.g. Jaguar and Lynx) and games and peripherals for said
hardware (including reviews), information about the availability of
said hardware, new discussion of the Atari Corporation and its
business practices and informative posts from developers and Atari
representatives about anything listed above.
Inappropriate material includes things discussed fully in any of the
group's recognized FAQs, un-informative posts which attack or promote
the Atari corporation without regard, anything which adds little or no
new information to the discussion of which it is a part, and
unconfirmed speculation and rumor about Atari and its products,
especially when stated as fact.
Moderation Policy:
Articles will be:
1) accepted, as is
2) accepted, with revisions
3) declined (with reasons and suggestions if posted directly to
r.g.v.a.digest. See below)
Every article posted to rec.games.video.atari
(rec.games.video.atari.discuss if the second part of this proposal
passes) will be considered by the moderator(s) for r.g.v.a.digest.
Articles
may also be submitted in the normal fashion (i.e. posting to the group
directly or sending a request to the moderator).
It is expected that the article acceptance rate will be low, due to
the large amount of noise in r.g.v.a. Eventually, this rate should
increase dramatically as the new moderated group draws people who are
truly interested in discussing the subject. For articles posted to
r.g.v.a(.discuss), authors will be notified of acceptance but
articles will not be returned. For articles posted directly to
r.g.v.a.digest, authors will be notified of of acceptance or rejection
but articles will not be returned to eliminate unnecessary traffic.
Moderation Procedure: The settling of this issue will be the first
order of business during the RFD. Software to support the scheme
outlined in the "Moderation Policy" above will be developed by Chris
K. Brown <ckb@mitre.org> using standard moderation software as a model.
Main topics of discussion will be settling on the number of
moderators and the identity of the moderators.
Part 2 Rename rec.games.video.atari
------------------------------------
Group: rename rec.games.video.atari to rec.games.video.atari.discuss
The summary line, distribution and charter of the new group
rec.games.video.atari.discuss would be unchanged from those
currently in existence for rec.games.video.atari. This change is
solely for the purpose of maintaining the structure of the name space.
Proposed by: Chris K. Brown <ckb@mitre.org>
All aspects of the proposal are still open for debate and discussion.
All useful suggestions are welcomed.
PROCEDURE:
This RFD is being issued in concordance with the guidelines set in
the "How to create a new Usenet newsgroup" FAQ regularly posted to
news.announce.newgroups ("Guidelines for USENET Group Creation, David
C Lawrence <tale@uunet.uu.net>, last modified 18 Jan 1995). Please
refer to this article if you have any questions about the newsgroup
creation.
The public discussion period will last a maximum of 30 days after this
RFD has been posted.
If, after the discussion period, it has been determined that this new
group is really desired, and the name, charter, and moderator(s) are
agreed upon, a Call for Votes will be posted to news.announce.newgroups
and to the other groups to which this RFD was cross-posted. Votes
will then be collected by a neutral third-party vote-taker from the
Usenet Volunteer Votetakers (UVV).
The two parts of the proposal 1) create rec.games.video.atari.digest
and 2) rename rec.games.video.atari to rec.games.video.atari.discuss
will be voted on SEPARATELY. Each part passing or failing
INDEPENDENTLY on its own merits, although both parts of the proposal
will be contained in the same Call for Votes (CFV).
__________________________________________
> STReport Jaguar Game Review: Checkered Flag
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
-= Available Now =-
Developed by: Rebellion Software
Published by: Atari Corp.
Sugg. Retail Price: $59.95
Ease of Play: Average/Intermediate
by Marty Mankins
Imagine if you will in the drivers seat of a race car, getting
ready to race for the title. Amongst you are others who wish to
take the opportunity away from you of becoming the next Al Unser
or Mario Andretti. After your drive, you realize that you should
have picked different tires and maybe had some adjustments in your
steering control. This is the experience of Atari's Checkered Flag.
It is a good driving game and has a good level of options for your
car, but controlling the car is something that needs some serious
help.
GAME OVERVIEW
Pick your car and configure it how you want it. Choose the color of
your car. It can be red & black, yellow & blue, white & yellow,
blue & green, red & white or green & white. Next, you can have
your weather conditions remain sunny, raining or foggy for your laps.
Your airfoil can be either low or high, depending how much wind
resistance you need. Change the tires to be best for dry pavement or
wet traction. There are two transmissions to pick from: manual 6-speed
or automatic 5-speed. You can have anywhere from one to five drone
cars follow you and cause you grief on your race. If this is your
first game, you can pick to race in a free practice, or choose a
single race or a tournament, where you have 10 laps to finish before
you can claim the crown. In free practice or single race, you can
choose to race between 1 and 99 laps.
Your choice of tracks is probably the best thing about this game. You
can choose from 10 different race tracks, some based on real race
tracks. In tournament mode, you start with one track and race it until
you finish your 10 laps. In going through all of these settings, I
found that the blue and yellow car with sunny weather, a low airfoil,
wet tires, automatic transmission, 2 drones and Green Valley were the
best combinations to race and really enjoy myself.
The sounds were realistic, but could have refined a bit more,
considering how long it took for this game to be released (not to
mention it's many title changes: from Checkered Flag to Red Line Racing
to Checkered Flag 2 back to Checkered Flag). Others who played the
game also commented on how the sounds could have been better. I
guess it's from all of those arcade sessions with Sega's Virtua
Racing that's spoiled us.
RACING AND GAME PLAY
I went through every single track in free practice and single race
modes and tried as many options as I could. I decided that I am
sticking (no pun intended) with the wet tires. They help you keep
on the track much better than the dry tires. Even in the sunny
weather condition, the wet tires made a world of difference and
helped make up for the lack of control with the car.
I ended up liking the Green Valley track the best for it's
consistent layout. It had the same number of turns and same amount
of straight-away. It was very easy to get used to and I got really
good at beating the drones. I still like the 2 drones, since I like
to race without other cars on the road (taken from my 2am freeway
drives at 100+ mph!).
One of the best tips that I can give for playing Checkered Flag,
besides using wet tires, is to play with an open mind and forget
other driving games. I mentioned earlier that I've been spoiled by
Sega's Virtua Racing, but this doesn't mean I am tied to it's ways
in Checkered Flag. You have to learn to turn with a small amount of
movement. Any more and you find yourself driving into one of the
mountains or guardrails. Also, slowing down when the road says,
"Slow Down", is good advice. I've played around with trying to take
sharp turns at the highest possible speed and have only made it once.
I may practice this more, but I don't think it's going too get any
better.
SOME DISLIKES
The first thing I disliked was the controls of the car. And sure
enough, I wasn't alone. Many of the people I talk with on CompuServe's
Atari Gaming forum felt the same way. Now it didn't leave the game
completely crippled, but missing was a control for steering. If this
would have been included, then all of the control problems could have
been solved for most players. My business partner's son mentioned
they should have just paid Sega the rights to port Virtua Racing onto
the Jaguar. Could have been a good thing. Actually, I prefer the
Atari Lynx version of Checkered Flag. It's controls for a handheld
system were much better than the Jaguar game play. And the selection
of tracks was slightly expanded, which could have helped, even though
I did find all 10 tracks to be very good.
Polygons bother some people, but not myself. The only change here
would have been a little more action with the car. It looked too
rigid on the screen, not moving well enough with the road to provide,
once again, that realistic look and feel.
CONCLUSION
Checkered Flag is one game that is worth about half it's retail price
(Note: some stores are actually selling it for $19.95 or $29.95),
considering the control problems. But, beneath this fault, the game
can be used with it's options to provide some fun and challenging
racing on your Jaguar.
Graphics:
7.0
Sound FX/Music: 6.0
Control: 5.0
Manual: 7.5
Entertainment: 6.0
Reviewer's Overall: 6.5
____________________________________________
> STR Editor's Mail Call "...a place for the readers to be heard"
""""""""""""""""""""""
Editor's MailBag
""""""""""""""""
Messages * NOT EDITED * for content
-----------------------------------
This is a letter from Anthony T. Talarico Jr. 73065,364.
Posted on March 06, 1995 in the Atari Gaming areas on CompuServe.
Ralph;
This is a reply to your message to John Mathieson from the;
"You're the Boss" section
Ralph, while your point that Atari management doesn't seem to go for the
brass ring is well taken, I do differ with you on a couple of things.
>> From high powered computers to high tech game consoles they've all
made it to market. Only to be ultimately clobbered by the competition
which was clearly outclassed by Atari's obviously superior hardware
offerings. <<
Atari's offerings have not always been obviously (by me) superior. In
1977, Atari didn't just have the best game console in the VCS, they had
the ONLY console. A year later, when the RCA Studio II and Fairchild F1
were out, the VCS was definitely superior. However, the next released
Intellivision blew the Atari away - at a 50 percent increase in price.
When Colecovision appeared at a competitive price, the public - and
developers - flocked to it in droves.
At this point, the 400 and 800 were out - definitely superior to
everything else on the market - and started to attract a LOT (for the
time) of interest. Then the VIC-20 grew up and became the C64. It was NOT
a superior design EXCEPT that it could show more than 4 colors at once. It
was harder to program, but the results were MUCH more marketable.
Now, admittedly, this all took place during the Warner years. They
definitely made bad decisions where home computing was concerned. Witness
their reluctance to develop the 1450XLD (or any 16-bit computer) and their
creation of the incompatible-with-everything 5200. Probably the best thing
they did was to sell the company.
On to the Tramiel years -
The very first bad decision, in my mind, was shelving the 7800. However, I
do not have ESP and do not know what other considerations Jack et. al. may
have had. I imagine that they were pretty strapped for cash at that point,
what with having just bought an entire company and all.
Their first piece of hardware on the market was the XE computers. Too
little too late against the growing tide of EGA PCS. But, it was an
inexpensive (relatively) upgrade to a somewhat popular computer. Then came
the ST line. Superior to PCS (and Macs) in every way - 64 colors, 3 « inch
disks, audio, MIDI - but NOT superior to the Amiga. What sold the STs was
price. They were the FIRST 16-bit computers that could be purchased for
under $1000.
The next thing the T's did was to FINALLY release the 7800. Definitely
better than the NES or the Sega Master System. Only problem was that the
Genesis showed up at almost the same time - for not a whole lot more
money.
The Jaguar is, in my opinion, the first design from the Tramiels that
TOTALLY outclasses the competition.
"... obviously superior hardware ..."??? I think not. However, in most
cases, the hardware was DEFINITELY good enough for the price. Then, what
was the problem? Why didn't Atari succeed?
>> Its really very clear to those of us who owe no allegiance to Atari,
for whatever reason, and take the time to observe and analyze the course
of action Atari repeatedly takes. It is quite clear that Atari's
Tramiels do indeed run a full blown dictatorship that is heavily
influenced with emotional decisions and knee jerk reactions on the part of
the Tramiels. <<
It is NOT very clear to me, and the only allegiance I have is to have
Atari produce enough games for the Jag so that I can enjoy it after it
goes the way of my 800XL and 130XE and 7800 (and it will, trust me.
Consumer electronics is a tough market.) as long as I have enjoyed the
aforementioned devices.
As I have stated before, I do not have ESP and cannot determine what runs
through the Tramiels collective heads. I do not know what market
considerations and business decisions must influence someone running a
company on a shoestring budget. I do not know how tough it must be to
convince vendors and distributors to work with me. I cannot know what
marketing surveys should be conducted to determine consumer tastes 1-2
YEARS down the road. If you do have this capability, I applaud you. I'm
sure the Tramiels would be more than happy to compensate you for it.
One thing I am (mostly) sure of, though, is that Atari MUST rely on their
dealers and end-users (us) for some of their marketing support. They do
not have the megabucks necessary to compete on the same scale as Nintendo
or Sega. Dealers, however, don't like to push one company over another
UNLESS they are absolutely sure that company would make a profit for said
dealer. Witness the "Microsoft Wall" in most software shops. That leaves
us. Word of mouth, in-home demos (invite your friends over) and letters to
magazines are our contributions. And NONE of us will be compensated for
it.
All this still does not answer the question you posed in your message -
"Why is Atari not number one (or at least, a MAJOR player)?" or mine, as I
stated, "Why didn't Atari succeed?".
Well, Ralph, to answer my question first, Atari HAS succeeded. They are
still around after over 20 YEARS. A company the size of a small grocery
chain - or even one of IBM's sales offices - is INTERNATIONAL! They have
products in development for the future. They have the money to develop
these products - AT THEIR OWN PACE. There is NO evidence that they are
going away in the near future.
I answer your question with another - Why should they be? They are making
money. They produce products that people enjoy (well, some of us anyway).
And, they still have name recognition in the minds of the consuming
public. They are successful, and that's all ANY company can hope for.
None of this (lengthy) note is meant to dissuade you from being you. This
is just my take on the whole Atari situation. This forum needs you. Unlike
others who continually post messages here that boil down to "Atari sucks,
and you should never buy their stuff", you provide many though-provoking
questions and thoughts. Without you, or someone like you, this forum
could easily devolve into "Our stuff is the greatest and nothing else
compares." like some other forums. Yechh!
Tony
Anthony,
There is very little in your observations that I can disagree with.
After all, aside from descriptive assertions, we are pretty much in
agreement. The only area in which we may fully disagree is the "Atari has
succeeded" area. Even there, its only to the point where its my opinion
that they've succeeded ok, but only as far as survival is concerned. They
have not and do not offer any example of having succeeded in a manner we
are all accustomed to.
Atari by its sheer existence at this time has, after so many failed
computer and game machine releases (ever mindful that the hardware was
excellent) by their own sheer stupidity in the marketing and public
relations areas, literally wrote the rule book on magnanimous foot shots.
The sad part is, they've apparently learned nothing from their past
experiences.
A simple but thorough examination of their PR Firm hiring and
management policies will quickly show they are still "playing the same
hire & fire game". Its obvious they hire these PR firms to satisfy the
stockholders and use them at the high visibility shows. Soon thereafter
the PR firm hits the bricks. Its hilarious! No.. Its really quite
tragic as they are proving beyond a shadow of a doubt they've learned
nothing by their past mistakes in this area. In fact, they're blatantly
giving strong testimony by their performance that they believe they know
what they are doing. Its simply incredible. With Atari, the more things
change the more they remain the same.
Thank you for your input and please go easy on the compliments my
"admirers and cheerleaders" will say I put you up to the praise. <g>
Thanks again for the fine post.
Ralph Mariano, Editor
_____________________________________________________
> ONLINE WEEKLY STReport OnLine The wires are a hummin'!
"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
PEOPLE... ARE TALKING
=====================
On CompuServe
-------------
compiled by
Joe Mirando
CIS ID: 73637,2262
Hidi ho friends and neighbors. I'm hoping that this is only the calm
before the storm for Jaguar announcements. It's been quite for a while
now and it's about time someone did something to shake us all up. I
know that most of you aren't really game machine enthusiasts, but you
really should take a look at the Jag. Just the things that are
available now make it a very cool possession, but when you think of all
the radical new things that are "just around the corner" (voice-modem,
catbox, virtual reality helmet, the CD-ROM player, JagLink) and the
prices that they'll be offered at (quite a bit less than similar items
for other platforms), the Jaguar truly is a great machine.
It's just too bad that the same can't be said for the computer side of
Atari. I was thinking the other day about what it would take to upgrade
my trusty STe to compete with some of the latest whiz-bang systems out
there. Unfortunately, it just ain't gonna happen. While you _could_
upgrade the ST series with more memory and a faster, more advanced CPU,
it would be expensive, and it still wouldn't be as fast as most of the
current generation of machines out there... while the internal processes
might be able to compete, the rest of the machine would still slow down
the 'whole shootin' match'.
And then there's the software... no Excel, no WordPerfect, no DOS
upgrades and, perish the thought... no DOOM! (But hey, I've got it on
the Jaguar and it's even better)
Then I had a thought (will wonders never cease?)... Do I need new
software? I've got everything I currently need and I don't see my needs
changing anytime soon. I've got NeoDesk and Geneva, which are more
compatible with TOS programs than Windows is with DOS programs, I've got
LDW Works, which does all I need a spreadsheet to do, I've got
Calligrapher, WordWriter, STWriter, and AtariWorks for all of my word
processing needs, and I've got literally HUNDREDS of
shareware/freeware/public domain programs that do all kinds of cool
things. Not to mention that I've got my BBS (Transcendence) and a MIDI
network set up between my STe and STacy for a fraction of what it would
cost to do those things on that other platform. Maybe one day I'll get
tired of my ST, but today is not that day. I'll use this puppy 'till
the day it curls up its virtual toes and goes belly-up. How 'bout you?
Well, let's take a look at what other people are talking about right
here on Compuserve...
From the Atari Computing Forums
===============================
"Asher" posts:
"I'm new to compuserve and could use some advice. I'm using FLASH and
am trying to determine the best way to set it up with the service. Can
I actually see graphics while in VIDTEX mode? I havent any success with
that yet. I'm using an Atari ST with mono monitor. I would appreciate
any tips."
Albert Dayes of Atari Explorer Online Magazine tells Asher:
"You should be able to see the RLE (run length encoding) type of
graphics on Compuserve. If you want to view GIF the only program that
I know of is Flash II by Missionware that supports online viewing of
GIFs.
It works very well even in monochrome on my Atari too."
Sysop Bob Retelle tells Asher:
"As Albert mentioned, the only online graphics format that the
original Flash telecom program supported was RLE, a much older format
than is used these days.
Flash II, which will display GIF files online is a commercial program
available from Missionware Software who have a section in the Atari
Vendors' Forum if you'd like to check out a demonstration version of
the program.. (unfortunately I don't know if the online viewing is
enabled in the demo version.)
Just GO ATARIVEN to find them, and they can give you more info about
the program."
John Trautschold of Missionware Software tells Bob and Asher:
"Yes, the 2.21 demo of Flash II does have online GIF viewing enabled."
I can honestly tell anyone who asks that Flash II is a truly superior
terminal program (it's one of my two favorites). The service that
Missionware offers is superb, and that's always a big consideration.
Meanwhile, Mark Westendorf asks for help:
"I am trying to find a zmodem program that will work with Interlink
ST. I am trying to bring my ST back on line after a lengthy time of
collecting dust. I forgot a lot about what I learned of the ST.
Interlink looks for a file that ends in ".txf". Not sure what that is.
Any help would be appreciated. It seems like I had a file for this
before but can't find it now."
Our own Atari Section Editor, Dana Jacobson, tells Mark:
"When I was an avid Interlink user, I used XYZ.TTP as my zmodem
transfer program. You'd need to run it as an external program, but it
worked very well. You may also want to consider "trading" Interlink in
for something more "modern", like Flash II. It took some doing for me
to give up Interlink, so I know it might not be easy! <grin>"
Mark then asks:
"What is the best way to stay in touch with new programs, etc for the
ST? I know not much is going on probably, but want to stay in the loop.
Please let me know."
Dana tells him:
"The best way to stay in touch with new (and old) programs is right
here on Compuserve! The Atari Forums are a wealth of information and
the users here are a great help. Another source, and something that
you can get right here, are the online magazines. I'll shamelessly
plug the one that I'm affiliated with - STReport. Also, you can find
Atari Explorer Online mag here also. STReport is a weekly mag and AEO
is out every couple of weeks or so. Both can be found in this Forum,
or in the Atari Gaming Forum (as well as other CIS areas)."
And as long as someone mentioned magazines, Rod MacDonald tells Mark:
"You could also subscribe to ST Informer Magazine, or Current Notes.
Each is ST Informer is $22 for 12 issues, Current Notes $24 for 6
issues. They both have extensive reviews of software and releases on
new products for the Atari. If you need more info, call 1-800-800-2563
weekdays Noon to 5PM Pacific Time..."
Asher posts:
"I've just had the pleasure of using CIM on an IBM clone and all I can
say to all ATARI die-hards (of which I am one) is: WHAT THE HECK ARE WE
WAITING FOR!!!???? Lets get with the program here. Or should I say
lack of programs here. We can emulate and spectre-ate while the others
just perpetually update."
Mike Mortilla tells Asher:
"For what it's worth, I've used CIM on my wife's MAC and hate it. I
much prefer manual, even though I can be in "Forum" mode. Guess I'm an
old fashion kinda guy...<grin>."
Greg Kopchak of It's All Relative Software tells Asher:
"We have CIM on our Pentium here, but to access CIS I always use a
scripted logon with Flash 1.6. I find it the most efficient way to
access the service.
CIM doesn't give me the control I like."
Benjamin Eby tells Greg:
"I agree. I prefer to be in manual mode, because of the flexibility.
I sometimes access with DOSCIM on my AT&T, but always in terminal mode.
I like the song, "Don't Fence Me In!" Once you get the hang of manual
mode, CIM is a pain in the lower extremities."
Paul Weinstein asks:
"Does anyone know the difference between an Atari ST & STe &STf?"
Sysop Bob Retelle tells Paul:
"There are only a few differences between all the ST models...
Generally the ones with an "f" in their model number, ie: 1040STf,
means that the computer has a built in Floppy drive.
The "m" in a model number like 520 STfm means it has an RF Modulator
that will let you plug the output into a normal TV set instead of using
a monitor.
The "e" in 1040STe means the computer is Enhanced.. it has better
graphics and sound than the previous models, as well as letting you
expand the memory with industry standard SIMM memory modules.
Those are only general guidelines.. some models don't follow them,
like the original 520ST.. it had no internal floppy drive, but it did
have the RF modulator.
Is there a specific model you're interested in finding more about..?"
Jamie Bonk asks:
"Does anyone know of a way to save Atari files as Mac files or better
yet have a Mac read Atari files."
Frank Heller tells Jamie:
"If I'm not mistaken Oregon Research has a program called DFORMAT.
They used to ship this with some of their other progams as an "extra".
There is an AFE (Apple File Exchange) boot sector routine built into
the early revision of this program (it wasn't on the later ones).
Anyway...it works. I have been sending midi files made on my Falcon to
a pal of mine with a Mac using this program. It works. I'm sure there
must be some other solutions out there...this is just the one I know
about."
Boris Molodyi tells Jamie:
"If your Mac has Superdrive (1.44Meg floppy drive), you can read DOS
format disks (which Atari also uses) using Apple File Exchange or PC
Exchange. To make sure that Mac reads those floppies, it is a good idea
to format them in Apple File Exchange as DOS disks (720K, as most
Ataris do not have 1.44 drives), and save files on them.
Whether your application will be able to make any sense of these files,
depends on actual programs you are using."
Mike Mortilla tells Boris:
"I just got my wife a Mac IIsi and I'm running sys 7.5 but can't seem
to get the PC Xchang to want to look at the floppy. It LOVES to look
at the SCSI port (always thinking about sex!) but no interest in a
floppy!
Any ideas? Boy, it's depressing just THINKING about using a MAC
<grin>."
Boris tells Mike:
"Hmm, that's strange. What happens when you insert a disk a) formatted
in DOS format and b) not formatted at all?
In case a) it should spin the disk for 15 minutes (that's a Mac,
nothing happens quickly), and mount it on the desktop, with large "PC"
written over it. In case b) it should spin for 15 more minutes and ask
you whether you want to eject the disk or format it. It will give you a
choice of DOS or Mac formatting.
If it does not do that, something is wrong.
I, personally, prefer using old Apple File Exchange rather than PC
Exchange. It does not write a ton of Finder comments onto disk, and
can do some reasonable file conversions in process."
Craig Harvey at Clear Thinking (the Ed-Hack/Edit-Pro guys) tells Boris:
"I don't think Apple File Exchange works with System 7. At work we
use MacLink Plus or Access to read DOS disks on our Macs."
Boris replies:
"AFE is not _supposed_ to work with System 7.5, but this is what I use
instead of PC Exchange ( I do not like it writing a ton of extra files
on my disks). Did not have any problems with it so far..."
Mike Mortilla tells Boris:
"An Atari disk won't read. If I format a PC disk on the Mac the Atari
will read it. Guess there's some funky something that Atari does in the
formatting process.
But back to your ??? The Atari disks spin a bit and then I am given
the option of formating or ejecting."
Boris replies:
"I see. As you know, Atari formats floppies *almost* like DOS does.
Apple's stuff, however, is far more finicky, in regard to disk format,
then either Atari or DOS are. Thus, if you format a disk on Mac
(preformatted disks also seem to work), you should be able to read it
both on Mac and Atari."
Mike replies to his reply:
"Thanks Boris, I finally figured that out! <g>
Now how do I get PageStream to work on the Mac <g> ...Magic Mac here I
come!"
Jon Sanford jumps in and tells Boris:
"Hehe... I just told Mike your solution might be his problem.
Experience should count but compared to opinion & wild guesses it never
wins.
Mac's system 7.5 will read Atari or MS-Dos TEXT files with very little
problem. It will format MS-DOS disks I can read on the Atari. Now U
can just put the disk in and the system opens it. U can move files
about. Write Now or any word processor can import plain text. TEXedit
a 10$ shareware prg can open almost anything.
Oh! wait-a-minit! I have a STeMega ..reads 1.44M floppies. If your St
is the older kind with 720k disks Hummmmm"
Yves Aubut asks for help in helping out a friend (jeez, haven't you guys
ever heard the second of five universal truths: No good deed goes
unpunished?):
"I am looking for a way to help a friend of mine. I have downloaded a
word processor from this forum for him. He does not own a modem. Now
I need to transfer it to his computer. I own an IBM 386 and want to
transfer a file (.lhz) to his atari. How can this be done?"
Good old Albert Dayes of Atari Explorer Online Magazine tells Yves:
"You can format a 720K floppy on the PC and use it to transfer files
back and forth with your friend's Atari ST. You can also download the
LZH program so you can extract all of the files from the archive also."
Sysop Bob Retelle tells Yves:
"As Albert mentioned, the PC and Atari ST share almost exactly the same
floppy disk format, so you can just put the file you downloaded onto a
3.5 inch floppy disk and give it to your friend.
The trick to making it work is to format the floppy disk on the PC,
and be sure to format it as a 720K disk because the Atari can't read
High Density disks..
(The DOS command would be FORMAT A: /F:720 <--substitute A: or B:)
Also, as Albert mentioned, you can uncompress the file for your friend
in case he doesn't have the proper uncompression utility yet.
In the case of the /LZH file you mentioned, the proper IBM utility
would be LHA.EXE which is available in the PC forums if you don't have
it already. Then you could just copy the uncompressed files to the 720K
disk, and your friend could use them directly in his Atari disk drive.
Let us know if you have any questions about any of this.."
Mike Myers asks for help:
"What I want to do is weed out a lot of older files, and then compress
them. There doesn't seem to be any way it can be done without going
thru manually, choosing them out and setting them aside for
compressing. Or am I wrong? Please let it be that I'm wrong."
Always ready to please, Paul Peeraerts tells Mike:
"You're wrong. The program Diamond Back lets you copy and compress at
the same time all files that are older than a definite time. You can
also manually include or exclude files that you (don't) want to be
copied and compressed.
I normally copy from my hard disk to a floppy, but all combinations are
possible. Unfortunately Diamond Back is "payware". It is sold by Oregon
Research Associates, CompuServe 71333,2655"
Mark Westendorf asks:
"Is it possible to link an Atari Megfile hard drive to an IBM machine
and its hard drive? Sounds interesting. Anyone have any clues? Please
let me know."
Andreas Rosenberg tells Mark:
"Your proposal depends on how you want to link the hard drives. The
Megafile contains a RLL hard drive with an ST502 connector. If you like
to use this drive in your PC you need a controller for this (like OMTI
5527). But you need to reformat the drive, because the partition info
between Atari and IBM is different. But I believe that is not the
solution you had in mind. If you need an easy way to ship greater
amounts of data between Atari and PC you might use an external SCSI
drive. You need a SCSI host adapter for the Atari and a SCSI controller
for the PC. But this doesn't solve the problem of different partition
tables. I'm currently writting a driver for the Atari that is able to
handle IBM partition tables. But I ran into problems, because Atari
and IBM use different ways to handle partitions greater 16MB.
If you had in mind that both computers might use the same drive at the
same time, I must tell you that such a thing is not possible.
Hope, I cleared things a bit."
Sysop Bob Retelle tells Andreas:
"I'd thought about hooking up a SCSI drive between my ST and PC, but
never got around to trying it..
Your driver sounds like the solution... do you think it would work if
you were to set up a 16 Meg partition just to use as a transfer space
between Atari and PC areas on the disk..?
For that matter, do you think it would be possible to format separate
Atari and PC areas..?"
And from our "Reunions With Old Friends" department, Simon Churchill
posts:
"A month ago I left you all due to the loss of the company account and
am now back to cause no end of hell for you all. (DOOM fanatic here!)
So to anyone and everyone please note the change in the number and if
you would care to send me a ditty or a welcome back for the third and
probably finale time then your message will be welcomed.
All messages will get a reply, even if there not printable. 8-)
But, no more of this noncence, it's time to party, so all meet at my
place and we will throw down.
If you need help to throw down then send me a message and I might have
an answer to your problem.
See ya round the forum.
Simon J Churchill. T28, faster than the average PC!"
Sysop Bob, never being one to miss out on fun, tells Simon:
"Welcome back, Simon..!
So the party's at your place, eh.. sounds good to me..!"
Mike Mortilla adds:
"Now he's in trouble! 2 Italians!!!!! (count me in!) ...where's the
wine (whine?)"
Hey Simon, make that three Italians! I'll be there with bells on. Well
folks, that's about it for this week. I tried to get some conversations
from the Graphics Support Forum, but it was temporarily unavailable...
that's what I get for waiting 'till the last minute.
Tune in again next week, same time, same channel, and be prepared to
listen to what they are saying when...
PEOPLE ARE TALKING
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STReport's "EDITORIAL CARTOON"
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> A "Quotable Quote" A true "Sign of the Times"
""""""""""""""""" A "real" meaning?
Of the Republican Contract...
Is it _with_ America?
OR
Is it _on_ America?
... Alphonse C.
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