AppleSauce, October 2007 - South Australian Apple Users' Club

Contents October 2007 

AppleSauce this month 3 

Peter Carter 

Presidential keyboard 4 

John Bohmer 

Troll 5 

Word of the month 

Peter Carter 

Tux Paint 6 

Painting for juniors 

Peter Carter 

Seashore 7 

Open source image manipulation 

Peter Carter 

Pixen 8 

‘Pushing pixels to the limit’ 

Peter Carter 

Inkscape 9 

Open-source vector illustration 

Peter Carter 

The view from BC 11 

Revamped iPod line 

Mike Millard 

Scrapbooking with iRemember 13 

The perfect solution is, of course, your Mac... 

Verle Wood 

Basic filing 15 

Save and Save As... 

Ian Boyce 

The Web page 19 

URLs, URLs, and more URLs 

Computing at Entropy House 21 

‘The fine print...’ 23 

Cover Picture: ‘Red on blue’, by Brian Plush 

South Australian Apple Users Club, PO Box 411 Glenside 5065 

SAAUC’s database is maintained with FileMaker Pro

Prescript... 

AppleSauce this month 

Peter Carter 

It’s interesting to compare the recent fortunes 

of Apple and Microsoft. From Apple 

this year we’ve had revised Macs, portable 

and desktop, revised iLife and iWork software, 

the iPhone, new iPods, including the 

touch, and there is the imminent launch of 

Mac OS X 10.5, Leopard. 

In contrast, what have we had from Microsoft? 

We now have to wait until next year for 

Office 2008. Sales of Vista hardly have that 

‘Wow!’ factor. Then there is that matter of the 

failed appeal to the EU judgement... 

The theme for this issue might be open source 

graphics software. I’ve been playing with 

Tux Paint, Seashore, Pixen, and Inkscape. 

Tux Paint is definitely in the ‘play’ category, 

Seashore and Pixen may well find serious 

use, and Inkscape already has a community 

around it doing professional work. It’s not 

Illustrator, but for many users it’s now the 

tool of choice. 

Scrapbooks have a long history, and, like so 

many other things, have now become digital. 

Verle Wood takes a look at iRemember, a 

package that makes digital scrapbooks. 

Ian Boyce has some advice on using the Save 

As... dialog to navigate through folders so that 

you have documents and images in an orderly 

arrangement. Good advice, and I’ve added a 

couple of extra bits of information to the end. 

Mike Millard has his regular perspective from 

45° N, and, like many others, is obviously 

taken by the new iPod touch. 

‘The Web page’ this month has an astronautical 

flavour, to go with the fiftieth anniversary. 

We were all saddened a few weeks 

ago at the passing of Ted Hyland, 

one of our committee members. Ted had been 

an engineer in his working life, and had then 

developed an interest in computing, particularly 

in databases. He joined the committee 

two years ago, and at meetings helped at the 

library table. 

Several committee members attended the 

funeral, and we express our sympathies to the 

Hyland family. 

This month’s meeting will be SIGs, but with 

a number of people away it will not be the 

usual set. Should be something interesting for 

everyone, however. 

October 2007 

AppleSauce Page 3 

Contents

Presidential keyboard 

John Bohmer 

Our next meeting is Friday 5 October, 

starting the formal presentation at about 

7:30 pm. That will be followed by SIGs. Grant 

will be filling in for me as I’ll be away on holidays 

during this evening. 

I’d like to bring to your attention our participation 

in the AUSOM raffle for a new iMac. 

Read about it at . Tickets are $5 each and we 

will be selling them at our October and November 

meetings. This raffle will be drawn 1 

December at the AUSOM monthly meeting. 

No more than 5000 tickets to be sold in total 

and SAAUC has only 100 of these available for 

our members: so get in quickly! 

A few other points were brought up at our recent 

committee meeting that I’d like to bring 

to your attention... 

• During SIG evenings we would appreciate 

members waiting to get their supper until 

the break period. That way SIGS which 

operate in the same room will not be interrupted 

by distracting activity 

• The supper co-ordinators appreciate everyone 

helping the cleanup process by returning 

cup holders to the serving table as soon 

as you’re finished with them 

• The organising committee spends a lot of 

time outside of meetings arranging resources 

to be available at meetings. One way of 

showing your appreciation would be to offer 

your services to watch over these resources 

and in turn free up a committee member 

to participate in other club activities too. It 

might be by watching the library table or 

just through arriving at meetings early or 

staying behind a bit later to help to 

setting up or packing away afterwards 

;-) 

I’d like to remind members to consider and 

submit questions and comments to The 

Advertiser so the Mac platform can be better 

represented in our local newspaper too. Any 

submissions can be made via oatenc@adv. 

newsltd.com.au or to connect@adv.newsltd. 

com.au 

Don’t forget the OSX Leopard release is due 

during October and that we have Greg Egan 

of Apple Adelaide visiting us at the November 

meeting to give us a heads up on its features. 

Exciting time ahead for all of us to explore a 

new OS X version offering many new features. 

If you cannot wait go see . 



Contents

Defining... 

Troll 

Peter Carter 

SAAUC’s mailing list is a polite and civil 

one compared to many others, where 

trolls are a fact of life. This definition is adapted 

from The New Hacker’s Dictionary. 

troll 

1. v., n. To utter a posting on Usenet designed 

to attract predictable responses or flames; 

or, the post itself. Derives from the phrase 

“trolling for newbies” which in turn comes 

from mainstream “trolling”, a style of fishing 

in which one trails bait through a likely 

spot hoping for a bite. The well-constructed 

troll is a post that induces lots of newbies and 

flamers to make themselves look even more 

clueless than they already do, while subtly 

conveying to the more savvy and experienced 

that it is in fact a deliberate troll. If you don’t 

fall for the joke, you get to be in on it. 

2. n. An individual who chronically trolls in 

sense 1; regularly posts specious arguments, 

Word of the month 

flames or personal attacks to a newsgroup, 

discussion list, or in email for no other purpose 

than to annoy someone or disrupt a 

discussion. Trolls are recognizable by the fact 

that they have no real interest in learning 

about the topic at hand — they simply want to 

utter flame bait. Like the ugly creatures they 

are named after, they exhibit no redeeming 

characteristics, and as such, they are recognized 

as a lower form of life on the net, as in, 

“Oh, ignore him, he’s just a troll.” 

Some people claim that the troll (sense 1) is 

properly a narrower category than flame bait, 

that a troll is categorized by containing some 

assertion that is wrong but not overtly controversial. 

The use of ‘troll’ in any of these senses is a live 

metaphor that readily produces elaborations 

and combining forms. For example, one not 

infrequently sees the warning “Do not feed 

the troll” as part of a followup to troll postings. 



Contents

Review... 

Tux Paint 

Peter Carter 

Many years ago there was some video of a 

2 year-old turning on a Mac, launching 

MacPaint, and starting to scribble. Tux Paint 

picks up from there, but with a wider range of 

tools, and it’s in colour. 

You can scribble with a brush (there’s a range), 

and draw straight lines and shapes, using a 

limited palette of colours. Use the Eraser to 

remove anything you don’t want. 

The paint bucket is in the set of Magic tools, 

with blur, smudge, bricks, grass, and other effects: 

all accompanied with sound effects. 

For even more fun there are stamps. The basic 

set is of Tux, the program’s (and the Linux) 

mascot, but an extra set includes a collection of 

birds and animals, planets and spacecraft, cars 

and other vehicles... Well worth downloading. 

Tux Paint works with PNG files, and it maintains 

its own collection (in ~/Library/Application 

Support/TuxPaint/saved/) 

using the date and time in ISO 8601 format as 

the file name: children don’t need to navigate 

the Finder or load and save dialogs. 

Tux Paint’s help system is an HTML page, 

which has brief notes on the tools and operation, 

written for adults. 

Painting for juniors 

Yes, that’s an Adelaide Rosella: the stamps include Australian birds 

and animals 

If you have young children, find Tux Paint for 

them at . Fun for all. 



Contents

Review... 

Seashore 

Peter Carter 

Seashore is an attempt to put the main 

tools of the GNU Image Manipulation 

Program (GIMP) into a Mac OS X package, 

without the need to run under X11. In that, 

it is largely successful, and if you want to do 

more with images than is possible with iPhoto 

but don’t want to pay for Photoshop or Photoshop 

Elements, then this program is worth a 

trial. 

Key tools with a program like this are brushes 

and selections. Seashore’s collection of brushes 

is wide, and they respond to stylus pressure 

on a digitiser. It is possible, with an extra utility, 

to make new brushes. 

The selection tools are the usual rectangular 

or elliptical marquees, and the colour selection 

tool, equivalent to Photoshop’s magic 

wand. Floating selections can be moved, 

copied, pasted, etc. The clone tool also works 

like Photoshop’s, although with a different 

key sequence. 

Textures are another feature of Seashore. 

There is a useful range provided, and new 

ones can be added, as PNG files. 

Another key feature of any image manipulator 

is the ability to use layers, and Seashore does 

Open source image manipulation 

not disappoint. Layers can be created and 

reordered easily. 

Each layer in a colour image has four channels: 

red, green, blue, and alpha. That alpha 

channel can be used to mask the other channels 

for interesting effects, as shown at right. 

Brightness and contrast can be adjusted, as 

well as colour balance, although the latter is 

via HSB sliders: not really intuitive. Some of 

the menu layouts also seem less than intuitive, 

but that may be due to familiarity with 

Photoshop’s layout. 

Supported file types are TIFF,, PNG, JPEG, 

JPEG 2000, GIF, and XCF. That last one is 

a GIMP format. Note that Seashore will not 

work with Photoshop .psd files. 

Seashore comes with a well-written ‘incomplete 

guide’ in PDF form. All the tools and 

concepts are described, and if you experiment 

as you read you’ll soon understand how Seashore, 

and often, by extension, how similar 

packages work. 

You can find Seashore at . It’s a universal binary, and 

requires Mac OS X 1.3 or later. 



Contents

Review... 

Pixen 

Peter Carter 

The OpenSword Web site at describes Pixen as: 

‘...an innovative graphics editor for the 

Mac. It’s designed from top to bottom for 

pixel artists — people who make low-resolution 

raster art like the sprites you see in 

old video games. But it’s great for artists 

of all arenas: Pixen is like a very powerful 

MSPaint or a simpler, more agile Photoshop. 

And best of all, it’s Free!’ 

In fact, I would hesitate to compare Pixen to 

Photoshop, the two are so different. It really 

is intended for ‘pixel artists’ who want to 

make relatively small and simple images and 

animate them. The implementation of layers 

is good, the selection and other tools are 

adequate, but there are none of the effects 

and filters of the Adobe product. If you want 

to edit photographs, look elsewhere. 

On the other hand, if you want to play with 

animations Pixen is a good package. The 

tools to manipulate cels, as the frames are 

called, are well put together, although there 

is no way to convert layers to frames, as with 

Photoshop. Also well implemented are colour 

palettes and the pencil pattern editor. 

I do have questions about Pixen’s stability. It 

‘Pushing pixels to the limit’ 

crashed on me when I tried exporting an 

animated GIF, and combinations of copy, 

paste, and move produced some weird 

results at times. That said, if you want a 

paint package to play with, Pixen is worth 

trying. 

An animation in Pixel. Diagonal 

grey stripes are the default 

background beneath a 

transparent cel 



Contents

Review... 

Inkscape 

Peter Carter 

Adobe Illustrator is the main industrialstrength 

drawing package. In the open 

source community the rising star is Inkscape, 

from . 

Illustrator, being from Adobe, was built 

around PostScript, but Inkscape uses SVG 

(Scalable Vector Graphics, the XML standard) 

as its file format. There are minor differences 

in terminology between the two (e.g. ‘node’ 

for ‘anchor’), and a rather different interface. 

It is possible for the two to work together, 

since Illustrator can read and write SVG files, 

but transfer may not be without problems. 

The Inkscape Web site gives a useful comparison: 

Things Adobe Illustrator can do that Inkscape 

can not do: 

• Gradient mesh (planned for future release 

via multiple transparent gradient fills) 

• Multiple strokes and fills for one object 

• Filters and effects (guassian blur, etc.) 

• Select line segments by clicking on the segment 

• Blend objects 

• Color management for print (ICC Profiles, 

etc.) 

• PMS color 

Open-source vector illustration 

Inkscape in action with a sample image. Second row of the toolbar is 

contextual, with node tools in this instance. 



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Inkscape 

• Save swatches 

• Wireframe mode 

• Natively work with graphs based on data 

• Free transform and perspective transform 

Things Inkscape can do that Adobe Illustrator 

can not: 

• Edit SVG source directly 

• Clones, Tile clones, edit clones on canvas 

• Keys to move/rotate/scale by screen pixels 

• Live shapes 

• Edit gradients with handles on-canvas 

• Edit nodes with keyboard 

Another thing it does not do is recognise pressure 

input from digitisers. 

That different interface is because Inkscape 

runs under X11 (see sidebar ‘X Window System’). 

For the Mac user that may be a disincentive, 

because X11 definitely looks un-Mac 

like, and imposes another layer of complexity. 

Despite that, Inkscape installs easily, and after 

a long first start, from thereon runs almost 

transparently. 

All the expected tools for drawing lines and 

shapes, and manipulating nodes and their 

controls, work smoothly. Strokes and fills, including 

gradients, are readily controlled, and 

all the layering and alignment tools work as 

expected. Without built-in filters and effects, 

things like drop shadows have to be generated 

manually, but that is not difficult. 

To an Illustrator (and before that, FreeHand) 

user it all feels rather different, but obviously 

well thought out and implemented. The Web 

site has links to some good documentation, 

with more on the way, and links to examples 

of work by Inkscape artists. 

A unique feature is the ability to read, and 

edit, the SVG code as the image is drawn. If 

you want to understand the inner workings of 

SVG this is an excellent learning tool. 

Like recent versions of Illustrator (and 

Streamline before it), Inkscape can trace 

vectors from bitmap images, although the 

process and controls are different. It can 

certainly generate the kind of diagrams I have 

been using in Australian Canoeing training 

materials. 

If you’re looking for a capable draw package, 

and are prepared to live with X11, Inkscape 

should be at the top of your list. The price is 

right. 

Two Inkscape dialogs (‘panels’ to 

Illustrator users) 

X Window System 

The X Window System (commonly abbreviated 

to X11 or X) is the standard display 

toolkit and protocol for Unix systems. It 

was originally developed at MIT in 1984, 

has been refined and developed continuously, 

and is available as free software 

under the terms of the MIT and similar 

licences. 

X is designed to be network transparent 

and operating system independent, and 

to provide a basic framework for applications 

to draw and move windows and their 

content, handle mouse and keyboard input, 

etc. The visual appearance can therefore 

vary between programs and operating systems. 

Apple did two things right with X11. In the 

first place, it developed its own GUI, Aqua, 

instead of using X11 as the default. The second 

was to make X11 available, as it enables 

Mac OS X to run the vast range of software 

available for Unix systems. 

For more information, see Apple’s X11 

page at , 

and the Wikipedia entry 

at . 



Contents

Musings... 

The view from BC 

Mike Millard 

New Pod People 

On 5 September, Apple revamped the 

entire iPod line, renaming one model 

and introducing a brand new model at the top 

end. 

The iPod shuffle remains unchanged in specs, 

but is now available in five colours, including 

silver and PRODUCT (RED). It costs $99. 

Most changed was the iPod nano. It is shorter 

and wider, with an enhanced 320 x 240 pixel 

screen that makes viewing pictures much 

clearer and brighter. Viewing functions on 

the screen has been enhanced. There are two 

models: a 4 GB model ($199), only in silver, 

and an 8 GB model ($279) in five colours. 

The ‘classic’ iPod —the traditional model — is 

now known as the iPod classic. Its interface is 

much improved, too, though it looks like its 

predecessor. Capacity is boosted. Two models: 

a 40 GB, at $349, and an 80 GB, at $479. 

The new top model is the iPod touch. A quick 

glance might describe it as ‘an iPhone without 

the Phone’. It is very similar in size but 

a bit thinner than the iPhone. It uses flash 

memory for storage. There are two flavours, 

8 GB ($419) and 16 GB ($549). The touch has 

Revamped iPod line 

one button to activate; after that, controls are 

on-screen, as on the iPhone, using similar 

gestures. 

Besides being being a music and video 

player, the iPod touch is equipped with WiFi 

(802.11g) and a version of Safari for Web 

browsing. Unlike the iPhone, it does not have 

email and other PDA-like functions. With the 

iPod touch, if you are in a WiFi zone, you can 

browse the Web using the Safari app. Playing 

any audio will sound tinny, as it only has a 

rudimentary speaker — the iPhone has a small 

but full-range speaker — so you must use 

headphones to hear audio at a decent quality. 

Apple has added a function to the iTunes 

Store. If this has been enabled in your country, 

you can use WiFi on a touch to contact 

the Store to buy and download music directly 

to the touch, then play it. (New purchases will 

get put on your computer the next time to 

sync with iTunes, now at v7.4.) 

Oh, here in Canada, like you in Oz, we sing 

Snow White’s song: Some day my iPhone will 

come... 

Doctor Seuss explains why 

computers sometimes crash 

(Read this one aloud!) 

If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port, 

And the bus is interrupted as a very last 

resort, 

And the address of the memory makes your 

floppy disc abort, 

Then the socket packet pocket has an error to 

report! 

If your cursor finds a menu item followed by a 

dash, 

And the double-clicking icon puts your window 

in the trash, 

And your data is corrupted ‘cos the index 

doesn’t hash, 

Then your situation’s hopeless, and your system’s 

gonna crash! 



Contents

The view from BC 

If the label on the cable on the table at your 

house, 

Says the network is connected to the button 

on your mouse, 

But your packets want to tunnel on another 

protocol, 

That’s repeatedly rejected by the printer down 

the hall, 

And your screen is all distorted by the side effects 

of Gauss, 

So your icons in the window are as wavy as a 

souse. 

Then you may as well reboot and go out with 

a bang, 

‘Cause as sure as I’m a poet, the sucker’s 

gonna hang! 

When the copy of your floppy’s getting sloppy 

on the disc, 

And the microcode instructions cause unnecessary 

RISC, 

Then you have to flush your memory and 

you’ll want to RAM your ROM, 

Quickly turn off the computer and be sure to 

tell your Mom! 

(From the Apples BC Newsletter, 

September/2007, courtesy of Paul Pazdera.*) 

Sporting perspectives 

It’s now October as you read this, the month 

when all five major professional sports in 

North American are in action. The Canadian 

CFL and American NFL (‘football’) seasons 

are well under way. Baseball’s season nears 

its end, with the ‘World Series’† ‘best of seven 

games’ final taking place in November. 

NHL ice hockey has just started its competition, 

after two weeks of ‘pre-season’ play, and 

does not end until early June. Basketball’s 

NBA is a little slower to get going, but they 

too carry on until almost the beginning of the 

North American summer. 

In closing... 

Please drop me a line if you have any comments 

or questions on this article: . Thanks. 

Can’t wait to try an iPhone or iPod 

touch? You want iPhoney, from . Its main use is to help Web 

designers make sure their pages 

display correctly on that small screen. 

* It has appeared in the pages of AppleSauce before, 

back in the days of the print edition. 

† The name ‘World Series’ never meant it was the 

world championship. Legend says ‘World’ is from 

the name of a newspaper in new York decades ago. 



Contents

Review... 

The perfect solution is, of course, your Mac... 

Scrapbooking with iRemember 

Verle Wood 

Scrapbooking, an American tradition, has 

been a popular craft activity here for a 

few years now. The idea is that one encapsulates 

an event (birth of a grandchild, the office 

Christmas party, grandma’s graduation), or 

even a whole lifetime (Golden Wedding Anniversary) 

in an album of pages of photographs 

decorated with buttons and bows and other 

ornaments. At our stage of living we would 

need a full-scale American barn to store all 

the pages thus created. Laying out pages using 

traditional methods also requires costly 

papers and embellishments. 

The perfect solution is, of course, your Mac 

(see requirements below) and iRemember is 

the perfect software to assemble creatively 

all your special memories. File them away for 

your dotage or future generations. Storage 

problem solved! 

You can, of course, print pages or transfer 

them to a CD or DVD for distribution. Scrapbook 

files have the extension .sbk but can 

be exported as JPEG at different qualities 

according to their destination, for example, 

email. You can also convert your pages to PDF 

from the Print dialog window. 

iRemember provides a couple of sample pages 

and tutorials to get you started, 

and plenty of attractive templates 

(665, to be precise!) covering 

a range of themes, which 

can be adapted to your purposes. 

When you’re ready to launch 

out on your own you can access 

via the Inspector palette, some 

20,975 images of buttons, ribbons, 

corners, brads, borders, 

backgrounds and more. Many 

of these mimic the traditional 

scrapbooking elements. 

Traditional scrapbook pages use 

a square layout 8½ in or 12 in 

(21.59 cm or 30.48 cm) but as 

I want to print some of mine I 

use an A4 layout. Files may be 

single pages — a single page could become 

a greeting card — or an album full of pages 

which can be added to at any time. From the 

View menu choose Show Page Drawer (much 

like Adobe Reader Pages tab) and click the + 

button at the bottom to add pages. 

Toolbar buttons are the standard ones in 

most drawing programs: selection, moving, 

lines, shapes, text, and so on. Click the arrows 

on the triangle button to see a further selection 

of handy shapes. 

iRemember ClipArt is under the File menu 

and once activated I keep it at the ready on 

the right of the screen. It has two tabs: one 

for inline images, and one labelled Store that 

links you directly to the macscrapbook store 

where you can purchase, among other accessories, 

more clip art. 

Under the Window menu be sure to select 

Show Inspector, a palette of tools to fine tune 

shapes, fills and images. 

Choose an appropriate background, drag 



Contents

Scrapbooking with iRemember 

and drop photos (JPEG, TIFF or PDF) 

from your files in iPhoto or elsewhere, 

or a disc, frame them, add text in your 

favourite font and style, choose and add 

the pretty bits, coordinate your colours 

and arrange all to suit. Lock each element 

in position as you go to avoid accidental 

changes. 

Other programs, including iPhoto, allow 

you to create picture albums but I 

find this a neat, versatile, compact alternative 

with lots of scope for creative enhancement 

of the pages. The Help files 

are clear, concise and comprehensive. 

The iRemember Web site will tell you 

more, and has a link to a free 15-day 

trial download. I bought my copy of 

iRemember from Pica Software, Melbourne, 

, cost 

$82.05, and it arrived on my doorstep 

in less than 24 hours. Apple stores in 

Adelaide are resellers and may have it 

in stock. 

Minimum requirements 

A Macintosh computer with a PowerPC G4 

or G5 processor, or an Intel processor 

Mac OS X version 10.3.9 or later 

At least 3 GB of free hard disk space for installation 

512 MB of random-access memory (RAM) 

installed 

Thousands of colors at 1024 x 768 monitor 

resolution 

DVD-ROM drive required for installation 

iLife ’05 or later recommended (which I 

don’t have) 

High quality inkjet printer (I use my now 

outdated Epson 830). Printing of 12x12 

scrapbooks requires a wide format printer. 



Contents

How to 

Basic filing 

Ian Boyce 

As John Bohmer has enjoined us all to 

contribute to AppleSauce I felt it to be 

a good time to put a few simple things down 

which may be of help to beginners and for 

those who feel that they have got themselves 

into a muddle with their filing. 

I have an old PC user friend who, though he 

does wonders with his photography, still has 

his photos and other files in a state of chaos. 

It is just about impossible to get through to 

him a simple system for getting things into 

tolerable order. 

It took me a year or two to understand how 

to navigate and how to properly manage my 

resources. 

A friendly neighbour instructed me ‘how to 

compute’, but her lessons consisted of teaching 

me only how to word process. I have since 

resolved never to start anyone off on their 

journey with computers without having first 

helped them to understand how to navigate, 

how to find things and to name them and put 

them properly away without any fuss. 

Hereafter, I merely touch on some of the 

items which I consider important to learn well 

and to learn early. 

Save and Save As... 

Study carefully the dialog which opens 

when you first save a photo or file. It 

asks you what name you want to give, 

where you want to keep your file and 

what format you want to keep it in. 

Make very sure you insert answers to 

all three questions. Do not overlook 

any one and in particular know exactly 

where you want to save it. There is a very 

convenient New Folder button on the 

Save dialog where you may create and 

name a folder into which you put your 

file. Like most of the advice I give here, it 

is necessary for you to examine the Save 

dialog, and play around until you have it 

mastered. 

You may prefer to create a folder with 

the Finder for your photos before you 

operate the Save dialog. Shift > Command 

N is the keyboard shortcut for 

this. 

After you have filled in the Save box you 

may click your photo or file on its red button 

(top left) and the file will go away where you 

have nominated and is then easy to find and 

impossible to lose. 

If you want another different version of your 

photo just click File > Save As... This enables 

you to create a new photo (a duplicate 

of the one you have up on your screen) with 

another name and, if you want, in another 

format. Save As... leaves your original photo 

just where it is and creates a new photo or file 

with a new name, format and position on your 

computer. Remember this new file or photo 



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Basic filing 

is not changed automatically. You are the one 

who determines its form and place when you 

fill in the Save As... dialog. 

(If you were to select a file in the Finder and 

hit Command D you would make a duplicate 

of your file which would be named automatically 

the same as the original but with the 

word ‘Copy’ attached.) 

When you Save As... be careful to name the 

new photo or file created and to select exactly 

where you want it to go. Change the format 

too if you so desire, e.g. .psd to .jpg. 

The uses of Save As... are many and varied. 

It needs to be thoroughly practised because 

the use of the Save As... dialog makes an extra 

photo which, if you are not careful, will pop 

up in an unexpected place. Take time when 

you are saving files (and Saving As...) to 

ensure that you know exactly what each file’s 

name is, where it is stored and what file type 

it is. Mastery of the straightforward art of saving 

is at the heart of organising yourself. 

I have found that using Column view is the 

most effective way of changing files around 

from one folder to another as it is much easier 

to simply click and drag files around when using 

this view. 

Clear your desktop and use it for navigation. 

Frequently files can be grabbed all together 

and pulled into another file in a different 

place in the open Finder window but this 

can get awkward. Everyone has had the experience 

of a selection of about 50 files suddenly 

jumping into outer space where, if you 

are lucky, you may discover them again if 

you remember a few of their details and use 

Spotlight correctly, but frequently the lost 

files stay lost for some time, which is a painful 

waste of time. 

It is simpler to transfer files from one part of 

your computer to another by activating the 

Finder and hitting Command N. A new Finder 

window opens and it is then easy to click and 

drag files into awkward places because you 

now have two Finder windows open at once 

and then you will see that it is easier to control 

files that you want to select and drag. 

Most people know the tricks for selecting 

multiple files. Briefly, click one file to select, 

then pass down the list of files and Shift click 

the last needed. This selects all files between. 

Command click any not required of those you 

have already selected. Another way to select 

is to Command click Individual files. By this 

method you can go down a list while in column 

view and select files at random. 

I may take twenty RAW photos of my granddaughter 

when she comes to visit. I make a 

folder of these, then one for DNG versions, 

one for PSDs at full size, one for my daughter 

for printing at 300 dpi at a smaller size, and 

small JPEGs saved for the Web at 72 dpi. It is 

also probable that along the way I may create 

a file for certain other versions so if I didn’t 

keep a good track on where each file resided 

I would be a nervous wreck. All of the above 

versions of my photos are created by using 

Photoshop Actions, thus it doesn’t take much 

time. If anyone is interested in learning about 

these in a future article then let me know. 

There will be some keen photographers who 

use Aperture where the conversion of photos 

into different formats for export to other folders 

is made very easy indeed, but no system 

operates properly unless the operator pays 

attention to naming and filing. 



Contents

Basic filing 

A bit more on Save As... 

Peter Carter 

Take a look at these two Save As... dialogs. 

They are both for the same file, to the same 

place, but the lower one gives a lot more 

information about where the file is going, the 

complete path, in fact. 

How do you get one from the other? On the 

same level as the file name you’ll see a triangle 

in a button. Click it, and the dialog 

expands (or contracts). 

That bit on the right hand side? That’s put 

there by Default Folder, a utility I’ve used for 

some years to make navigation even easier. 

You can find it at St Clair Software’s site: 

. 



Contents

Basic filing 

In classical times you could put almost anything 

anywhere (and some people did), but 

Mac OS X is a much more disciplined system. 

It, and especially Apple software such as the 

iLife suite, expect to find things in certain 

places, and with particular names. 

Change the names, move or delete any of 

these folders or System-related files, and 

things will go awry. 

Within your own Documents, Pictures, Movies, 

and Music folders you can organise things 

how you want, but to make files easy to find 

and maintain you should be systematic. Plan 

the folder hierarchy so that it’s all logical. 

It may seem like a good idea to put things on 

the Desktop. In fact there are System overheads 

in doing that, so files are best put in 

their place. To help find them quickly, an alias 

in the Dock is the best way. 

The old motto was APFEAEIIP: a place for 

everything and everything in its place. Still 

worth following 

The top-level directory 

Tamper with these at your peril... 

The Home directory of one user 



Contents

Links... 

The Web page 

To mark the occasion, Encyclopedia Astronautica 

has a Sputnik plus 50 page, with 

an overview of the launch and other events 

of the time: . 

Google and its partners have announced the 

Google Lunar X Prize, with $US30 million 

to the team that puts a rover on the Moon, 

moves it 500m, and returns video of its activities: 

‘The Google Lunar X Prize seeks to create 

a global private race to the Moon that 

excites and involves people around the 

world and, accelerates space exploration 

for the benefit of all humanity...’ 

The Lunar X Prize site, at , 

has details of the 

competition as well as information on the 

Moon itself. Through the new Google Moon 

site, you can 

go on ‘Apollo field trips’, which have pop-ups 

with details of the Apollo landings, which in 

turn link to transcripts of the EVAs and other 

events. 

Exploration continues. Now on its way to 

asteroid Vesta in 2011 and the dwarf planet 

Ceres in 2015 after several delays, is DAWN. 

Mission home page is at . 

URLs, URLs, and more URLs 

The Apollo 15 LM was named 

Endeavour, after Cook’s ship. 

On stepping on to the lunar 

surface, CDR David Scott 

remarked ‘Okay, Houston. As I 

stand out here in the wonders 

of the unknown at Hadley, I sort 

of realize there’s a fundamental 

truth to our nature. Man must 

explore. (Pause) And this is 

exploration at its greatest.’ 



Contents

The Web page 

Space enthusiasts may be interested in a new 

Web magazine, Space Lifestyle. As Bad Astronomer 

Phil Plait put it, the publication is 

‘not about what spacesuit to wear after Labor 

Day; it’s actually for enthusiasts of space and 

space travel. The first issue is breezy and fun, 

with articles about Yuri’s Night, Gliece 581C, 

and oh yeah — me.’ 

Space Lifestyle is at . 

‘What looks like the head of a digital 

dandelion is a map of the Internet generated 

by new algorithms from computer 

scientists at UC San Diego. This map features 

Internet nodes — the red dots — and 

linkages — the green lines. But it is no 

ordinary map. It is a (mostly) randomly 

generated graph that retains the essential 

characteristics of a specific corner of 

the Internet but doubles the number of 

nodes.’ 

From the Inkscape gallery. Subtle 

use of gradients 

Read about it at . 

How have computers changed over the years? 

Here are nine publicity photographs from earlier 

days: . 

From 1971, the Control Data Cyber 70 



Contents

Incoherent comment... 

Computing at 

Computing at 

Entropy House 

“In the course of the last years in the 

Soviet Union, scientific research and 

experimental construction work on the 

creation of artificial satellites on the Earth 

has been going on. As a result of a large, 

dedicated effort by scientific-research 

institutes and construction bureaus, the 

world’s first artificial satellite of the Earth 

has been created. On October 4, 1957, in 

the U.S.S.R., the first successful satellite 

launch has been achieved. According to 

preliminary data, the rocket launcher carried 

the satellite to the necessary orbital 

speed of about 8,000 metres per second...” 

(Pravda, 5 October 1957) 

Reaction in the Western press was somewhat 

different, and was accompanied by much 

soul-searching. The Cold War had taken a 

new turn, and the race was on. 

In parallel with developments in launch 

vehicles went the development of computers 

to control them: in the early 1960s the two 

largest markets for integrated circuits were 

the Minuteman missile and the Apollo programme. 

That work eventually led to your Mac, among 

other things. 

(One thing that has changed little in the subsequent 

50 years is Sergei Korolyov’s R-7, still 

in use as the basis of the Soyuz launcher.) 

New iMac has arrived at Entropy house 

to finally replace the 400 MHz G4, 

which was kept on until Intel-native version 

of Adobe CS was available. (Mind you, it will 

have to keep going a while longer, as it’s the 

only machine in the 

place able to run 

FrameMaker.) 

Connected new and 

old with FireWire 

cable and started 

G4 in target disk 

mode. iMac could 

see only the G4’s 

original, OS 9 disk, 

not the second, OS X 

drive. After several 

restarts, gave up and 

did things manually. 

(And it then took 

several restarts to 

convince the G4 it 

should start normally, not as a target.) 

Began installing software, from Apple 

(iWork), Adobe (CS3), BBEdit, etc., but not 

Microsoft. Went looking for Intel versions 

of drivers for the Agfa and Nikon scanners: 

nothing, on either Agfa or Nikon sites. 

VueScan, from , was 

the answer to that one. Runs both scanners, 

and is definitely better than Agfa’s ScanWise. 

It’s so far from one 

side to the other... 



Contents

Computing at Entropy House 

Transferred from one club to another 

recently, and within days of joining the 

new group was elected its secretary (thereby 

continuing a tradition dating back to 1974...) 

One of the responsibilities is maintaining the 

Web site, which is part of the national body’s 

site, managed by a firm in Melbourne. They 

have put together a content management system 

(CMS) which is intended to allow people 

without IT skills manage their sites: provided 

they run Internet Explorer on Windows PCs. 

Found that Firefox coped better than Safari at 

working with the system, but there are continuing 

problems with access permissions. It 

will allow one to upload images and edit text, 

but not send messages to subscribers. 

Much prefer to manage CSS formatted Web 

sites, with BBEdit and Fetch. 

In one’s former life it was important to 

have some idea of what was happening 

inside students’ heads, and Piaget and Papert 

were sources of understanding. Studying 

non-human minds is often useful, and artificial 

intelligence studies have given us many 

insights. 

Even better insights came from the work of 

Dr Irene Pepperberg and her collaborator, 

Alex the African Grey parrot. Alex (for Avian 

Learning EXperiment) was said to have the 

personality of a 2 year old child, and the 

language abilities of a 5 year old. He often 

appeared on television science programmes, 

recognising and talking about objects, shapes, 

colours, and numbers. There are clues that 

he even had some understanding of phonics, 

sounding words to emphasise. 

Sadly, Alex died on 6 September at the age of 

31, and no cause could be found. A bird, yes, a 

‘birdbrain’ definitely not. He will be missed. 

At three weeks old, Andreas is already 

well attuned to his home state’s seismic 

activity. From . 

Turn your MacBook into a seismograph 

with SeisMac, from 

How AppleWorks used to look: your 

edit’s background for his Pages ’08 

presentation. (Well, almost: as Grant 

Ward observed, it’s not real, being put 

together with a proportional font, not 

the monospaced of the real thing.) 



Contents

‘The fine print...’ 

AppleSauce is the official organ of SAAUC Inc., and is published eleven times 

per year, February – December. 

AppleSauce is an independent production and has not been authorised, sponsored 

or otherwise approved by Apple Computer Inc. 

Opinions expressed in AppleSauce may not be those of SAAUC or its officers. 

Guidelines for Contributors 

Articles and artwork on any topic relating to Apple computers are welcomed. 

E-mail to the Editor , or post to the Editor’s 

business address (Pelagos Productions, PO Box 133 Brooklyn Park 5032). 

Deadline is the third Friday of the preceding month. 

Submissions must be spell checked, in ASCII text format (.txt, not Word .doc 

or AppleWorks .cwk), with graphics as separate files. Text and images may be 

combined in a StuffIt or ZIP archive. (If in doubt, please ask.) 

The Editor reserves the right to edit as required: authors will be contacted if 

major surgery is necessary. 

AppleSauce is edited and laid out with InDesign, with a bit of help from 

BBEdit, Photoshop, Illustrator, etc. before conversion to Acrobat. 

Advertising 

Small advertisements from financial members will be accepted and published free of 

charge, provided they are signed by the person(s) placing the advertisement. 

Business advertising rate is $50.00 per page (or by negotiation) with submission 

as PDF file. Page size is A4 landscape, and commercial advertising deadline is the 

second Friday of the month. 

Advertisements must not conflict with the interests of the club. Publication does not 

imply recommendation or endorsement by SAAUC Inc. 

Copyright 

Except where otherwise stated, this publication is copyright © 2007 by SAAUC Inc. 

Authors and advertisers express their own opinions and are responsible for the accuracy 

of their submissions. 

Permission is granted for the reproduction of original articles contained in this issue 

by any non-profit organisation provided the author, title and publication credits are 

given, and a copy of the publication is sent to SAAUC. Contact the editor for text and 

graphics files. 

South Australian Apple Users’ Club Inc 

Directory 2007 

President: John Bohmer 

Vice President: Grant Ward 

Secretary: Judith Watts 

Treasurer: Susan Harrap 

Editor: Peter Carter 

2007 Committee: David Baker, Peter Dametto, Ted Hyland, Geordie 

Millar, Eric Montgomery, Brian Plush, Peter Weichmann 

To contact SAAUC by e-mail please use the Club address, , or by post, PO Box PO Box 411 Glenside SA 5065. 

Web site: 

AppleSauce is prepared with BBEdit from Bare Bones Software, and Adobe 

InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, and Acrobat Professional. Folder navigation is 

aided by Default Folder from St Clair Software, Web site maintenance by Fetch 

from Fetch Software 



Contents

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