© 1993 Lawrence I. Charters
Washington Apple Pi Journal, Vol. 15, no. 2, February 1993, pp. 37-38.
Working With Displays: VDT’s and Radiation Safety
Working With Displays: VDT’s and Vision
Working With Displays: A User’s Guide to Better Keyboarding
Working With Displays: A Practical Guide for VDT Users, $1.00 each
For some time now (another way of saying ”I don’t know when they started this”) Apple has been including a booklet in all new Macintosh computers with advice on how to set up and use a computer. What makes the booklet interesting is that this publication is concerned with the user’s comfort and health, not that of the computer. Most of the information comes from the Center for Office Technology.
Founded in 1985, the Center’s mission is to explore and promote the proper use of”office technology,”but this often means “personal computers.” It publishes a bimonthly newsletter, videotape training packages on proper VDT (video data terminal, or personal computer) use, and a constantly growing series of studies on everything from the effects of ultra low frequency radiation to avoiding carpal tunnel syndrome.
At 16 pages each, with lots of illustrations, none of the booklets pretends to be a definitive study, but they cover most of the high points in an easily digestible form. They point out, for example, that most vision problems and physical pains routinely blamed on “the computer” are due to three main causes: bad furniture (or improper placement and use of the furniture), bad or inappropriate lighting, and lack of exercise.
The center is sponsored by Apple and IBM (and a whole bunch of insurance and computer companies), so conspiracy theorists shouldn’t have any trouble dismissing these as products of a corporate plot. For the rest of us, the booklets have definite value: if you are a manager, they will help you design and prepare a safe and healthy working environment for your employees. If you are an employee, they might help convince the boss you need a different kind of chair, desk, or lighting. If you are a spouse, they can help you force the home computer off the kitchen table and on to some more appropriate surface.
Center for Office Technology
1800 North Kent Street, Suite 1160
Rosslyn, VA 22209
(703) 276-1174
Title: QuarkXPress 3. 1 Quick Reference
Author: Assadi, Barbara
Publisher: Que Corporation, 1992
Length:150 pp.
SRP: $9.95
ISBN: 0-88022-769-9
Once upon a time, QuarkXPress had a reputation as being exceptionally powerful, exceptionally expensive, and exceptionally difficult to use. While it is still the most powerful Mac page layout program, the price is about the same as comparable packages, and the latest version, XPress 3.1, is quite easy to use.
But not necessarily easy to remember. There must be at least a dozen different ways to do anything, and the program is so feature rich that even experienced users routinely discover by accident features they should have been using all along.
This slim book helps overcome the feature profusion by presenting all major commands and options in a nicely organized, quick-reading outline form, with step by step instructions on how to perform almost any imaginable action. A good table of contents and decent index help guide you to just the right section.
Until Robin Williams decides to make a QuarkXPress version of her superb PageMaker 4: An Easy Desk Reference, you may find this book the best ready-reference on XPress. And it’s cheap, too.
Title: Que’s Computer User’s Dictionary
Author: Pfaffenberger, Bryan
Publlsher: Que Corporation, 1991
Length:1549 pp.
SRP: $10.95
ISBN: 0-88022-697-8
Apple users are notorious for knowing nothing of the technical details of their computer. Many seem to think those who know the difference between memory and storage, for example, have fallen victim to “the dark side of the force,” and will probably do something stupid like buy an MS-DOS clone.
But a computer is, more than anything else, a communications tool, and you can’t communicate without sharing a common language. This slim but comprehensive dictionary covers the entire vocabulary of computing, from mainframes to micros. You won’t find mention ofQuickTime or pen-based computing (these terms are quite new), but you will find accurate, succinct definitions of the usual acronyms (RAM, ROM, SCSI) as well as such terms as histogram, gateway, YMCK and x-axis. While there is an obvious profusion of MS-DOS terms (and all the illustrations are from MS-DOS or Windows screens), there are literally hundreds of Apple-specific terms as well.
This is not, obviously, a book you want to study in detail, but it makes a great reference. If you decide not to get this particular computer dictionary, you should, at the least, get somebody’s dictionary. It is hard to explain why a Mac is better than someone’s clone machine with SVGA graphics-when you don’t know what “SVGA” means.
Title: An Introduction to Digital Color Prepress [Volume I]
Title: Digital Color Prepress, Vol. Two
Publisher: Agfa Corp., Prepress Educational Resources
Address: P.O. Box 7917 Mt. Prospect, IL 60056-7917
Telephone: 800-395-7007
SRP: $10 each
Any Macintosh with at least a megabyte of memory and a hard drive can be, with the addition of just a little software, a professional typesetter. Anything you type can appear with unerring precision on a printed page, and the page can be printed on anything from a bit-mapped Image Writer dot matrix printer to a multi-million dollar press, just like those used by Time Magazine, National Geographic and other glossy magazines. The Macintosh makes this so easy that it requires only a few minutes to turn anyone into an expert on the subject. (Good taste might take a bit longer.)
But what about pictures? Pictures are another story entirely. What looks good on an ImageWriter won’t look good on a LaserWriter; and what looks good on a LaserWriter won’t look good on a Linotype. The intricacies of getting pictures to look good are compounded greatly if you fantasize trying to produce color pictures. Even a simple discussion of color separation soon degenerates into a bewildering cloud of concepts and terms that seem beyond the interests and capabilities of all but the most perverse. Unless you, too, have read the Agfa guides to digital color pre-press.
These two slim, richly illustrated booklets cover the major concepts involved in just enough depth to either whet your appetite and desire to actually try this or convince you to flee for your life. Everything from anti-aliasing to undercover removal is explained, often with multiple copies of the same image, each prepared slightly differently, to illustrate some concept or technique. Both volumes also have excellent glossaries, with definitions, to help you understand the vocabulary.
If $10 for a 32 page booklet seems steep, there are alternatives: sign up for a class in color prepress, or better yet just create a color separation and have it printed. Both these options are far more expensive, but at least then you’ll appreciate that these two booklets really are bargains.
Title: Art of Darkness: The After Dark Companion
Author: Fenton, Erfert
Publisher: Peachplt Press, Berkeley, CA, 1992
Length: 115 pp., Includes disk
SRP: $19.95
ISBN: 1 ~56609-012-1
In the introduction to this book, Fenton answers the inevitable question of why does the world need a book on a screen saver: “Well, why not? After all, After Dark probably shows up on your screen more often than any program you own.” rm willing to go further: I suspect more computer power has been devoted to generating After Dark displays on Mac computers than has been spent on the entire U.S. space program. I know, from personal observation, that users spend more time customizing and playing with the After Dark modules than they spend learning how to use Excel and Word. In fact, if After Dark could generate business letters or spreadsheets, U.S. productivity would probably double within a year.
Should you get this book? Answer this question: Has anyone ever called you on the phone and asked “What is making that sound?” when Flying · Toasters were flying by? Have you ever called someone and heard the gurgle of bubbles from Fish! playing. on their computer? Are you using more hard drive space for After Dark, More After Dark, and ShareWare After Dark modules than you are for your professional work?
If the answer is “Yes!” then you need this book. Not only will it delight you with some outrageous history, real and imagined, and some great tips on customizing After Dark, but it also comes with nine new After Dark modules. These range from the brilliant, and seriously deranged, Blackboard, to the obnoxious Bogglins, to the exquisite Strange Attractors. Those with an interest in history can also view ProtoToasters, the very first After Dark module, never before released in public.
Sad to say, there is some genuinely useful information in Art of Darkness. But don’t let that spoil things; read it for fun. Most of the other computer books don’t even mention the word “fun.”