Doing It by the Book

BY EDEN MAXWELL

Editorial

President’s PDA

Computer
Connections

Doing It
by the Book

TUTORIAL –
Part 1 Web Design

REVIEW –
Netgear RP 614
Router

Qaptain Qwerty’s
Qorner

From My Keyboard

Volunteer
for Express!

I was thrilled to get the book contract from the publisher. The only task left was to write it, so I am currently doing that very thing. As I work, I am collecting some awesome apps that significantly contribute to my productivity. Note: You can download a demo of each of these apps from the company's website.

NoteTaker 2003
Although word-processors are good for writing and working with text, they are essentially linear tools. Even those offering an outline format are unable to help me organize my multidimensional thinking. That is, organically, like a puzzle, with a piece here and a piece there until a section or chapter is complete.

From the first few moments of working with NoteTaker 2003 (OS X 10.2 or higher) from AquaMinds, I realized that here was a digital prayer answered. NoteTaker, a new, elegant, and highly flexible OS X personal note and idea organizer, immediately helped me organize my ideas for the book without interfering with the flow of my thoughts. I can make a list, organize an outline, or jot down an idea.

NoteTaker employs an interface metaphor of a spiral notebook with section tabs. What makes this notebook especially useful is, that I can see all of my working files at a glance by viewing the handy Drawer panel containing the History, Contents, and Libraries. I can also customize the look of my notebook with a cover page, colors, fonts, and paper styles. NoteTaker's find feature makes locating words and phrases on complex projects much easier.

NoteTaker 2003 lets you design the notebook the way you think and work. One great feature of this versatile application is being able to view all of your topics and files at-a-glance.

Some users will have one tab section and a long list of outlines. Others will use numerous sections with many pages in each one. It makes no difference how you decide to organize and use NoteTaker; it's an electronic paper system on your desktop that's flexible, intuitive, and easy to understand. It works your way and that's the inner beauty of this well thought out tool. If you have a stylus and tablet, use InkPad or another OS X drawing application to insert scribbles and free-hand sketches directly.

But, NoteTaker is not limited to text. You can, for example, insert images, QuickTime movies, voice memos, and make use of the Clipping service (one of my favorite features). It facilitates clipping articles, research, and other text directly into a notebook while browsing the Internet, email, or a document. Simply set it up for a section or page, and insert clippings directly from Mail, Safari, or any OS X application that supports services. It's more convenient then copying and pasting, and NoteTaker doesn't even have to be running to do it. For example, when researching on the Web, you can use the Clipping service to select pertinent content from a website page. The text and URL are automatically copied to your NoteTaker page of choice, and you'll no longer have to wonder where you got the information.

Use it to arrange personal information, keep a project journal, and communicate your ideas to the world, or to organize the complexities of a master's thesis or a book. NoteTaker has become my indispensable app and it will for anyone who writes.

I've mentioned only a few of the features you will find in this remarkable organizing tool. Buy NoteTaker now. You will thank me later.

Word Menu
This is a unique, reference tool gem from Write Brothers, Inc. that is somewhere between a dictionary and a thesaurus. I launch Word Menu when I start my day's work, and it runs unobtrusively in the background until it's needed.

Word Menu is the revolutionary reference tool compiled by the innovative lexicographer, the late Stephen Glazier. Instead of listing words alphabetically, it organizes by subject matter. For example, you can look up specific terms within such categories as: nature, science and technology, domestic life, art and leisure, language, and many others. You can find the precise word you need by narrowing down its category starting with a general idea.

For example, let's say I'm writing a screenplay about an artist and don't know that abstract expressionism is the correct term to explain the oeuvre of the main character's paintings. By following a breadcrumb trail beginning in Arts and Leisure, I'm led to Fine Arts and Literature, then Painting, and then to Schools and Styles of Fine Art where I find a comprehensive list of terms, including abstract expressionism with its definition.

As I mentioned previously, Word Menu organizes the English language by subject categories. They are listed in the Contents Panel and arranged in a logical order running from the general, i.e., Nature, or Arts and Leisure, to the specific, i.e., The Reproductive System, or Stringed Instruments. The lowest level of the structure contains almost 1,000 lists, each one with 50 to 200 defined terms.

Word Menu's simple, yet effective interface is ideal for hunting down that elusive "right" word. Click on the Vocabulary Pad on the left, then drag and drop newly, found words and meanings onto the panel for later reference.

The structure and its word associations make finding groups of words being sought easy to find. In technical and institutional areas this order is absolute: Parts of Ships, Sails and Equipment, for example, are within Ships and Boats, which is within Transportation, which is found within Science and Technology. For more abstract subjects like Language, Cognition or Faith, it won't take long to become familiar with the "threads" so that you can locate Judgment and Criticism, Magic and the Occult, Exclamations, or Verbs of Motion, for example. You can also use the software's search function to locate a category in seconds, or a definition by using a word or phrase.

Writers are forever seeking the word that evokes the right nuance of expression. To find a verb, for example, that describes disagreement or opposition; look first under the category, Judgment and Criticism, where you will find the subcategory, Opposition, Disagreement, and Attack. You can compare the definitions, and choose from among such terms as niggle, nitpick, quibble, take issue with, and repudiate. If these aren't strong enough, move on to the next subcategory, Blame, Censure, Ridicule, and Contempt.

If you had a restless night because you couldn't remember the word for "a close-fitting, academic cap with flat, square top and a tassel," you could have slept like the proverbial baby if you'd searched for definitions containing "tassel." This would have yielded 12 matches, including the word "mortarboard" (under Hats, Headgear, and Hairpieces> Hats).

In the process of finding the right word you will exponentially expand your vocabulary. To help remember the newly discovered words and definitions, Word Menu has a Vocabulary Pad that is easily accessed via a tab panel. You can store each word and definition by simply dragging it into the panel, making it handy for looking up those words again later.

Well designed, and with automatic, web updating of the database to keep it current and alive, Word Menu offers many features, including:

• Easy Browsing by clicking on topics and subtopics. Every topic leads to more subtopics and eventually the appropriate word lists.
• Split Results View has two scrollable panes that show a list of words on the top, and the words plus definitions on the bottom.
• A quick traverse of topics and thousands of words until "the one" is located. Word Menu is a Treasury of Glossaries with nearly 800 divisions and more than 80,000 entries. Note that these entries are not merely lists of words, but concise definitions as well.
• A Reverse Dictionary to search by meaning. The results, in turn, are fine-tuned until the elusive word is found.
• An Almanac with entries for world holidays, sports terms, science and more.

Word Menu helps you find nearly any word you can imagine. It's an incredibly useful tool that will give your writing the power of precision. Feeling scholarly? Contribute to Word Menu by going to the Help dropdown menu to suggest new words and their definitions.

Use Word Menu every day and never be lost for the correct word again. You will impress yourself and those who read your writing.

Don't take my word for it. Test Word Menu for yourself.

About the author:
Eden Maxwell is a fine artist and published book author. He has contributed to many publications, including Popular Science, Art Calendar Magazine, Drachen Foundation Journal, Popular Mechanics, MacStreet Journal Online, Omni, MacUser, MacDigest, and Computer Gaming World. His art has been exhibited on both the West and East Coasts and his work has appeared in the Encyclopedia Britannica. Eden is currently writing a book for artists to be published in 2004. Visit Eden’s Atelier and Gallery website. You may also reach him via email.]

Silhouette
While at a local Starbucks taking a cappuccino break from my writing, I ran into someone who wanted to get his uncle a special birthday present. He showed me several color photographs of his uncle's classic, 1957 Plymouth Fury Convertible, and wanted to know if I could do a portrait of the car in the next few days.

I told him I could work from his photos; we discussed the fee and shook hands. Fortunately, I had recently discovered Silhouette, an app that would help me dramatically accelerate the car art commission.

To understand what Silhouette from Free Soft does, you need to know the basic difference between a bitmapped and a vector graphic. A bitmapped graphic is made up of individual, square pixels; it's akin to a late, 19th-century, painting style called pointillism.

"What's that?" you say. Well, look it up in Word Menu!

When many thousands of these pixels are taken in toto, they form an image of continuous gradations and values with seemingly smooth curves. Adobe Photoshop and Corel Painter work primarily with bitmapped images. They are resolution dependent and will always print out at the resolution assigned when they were created. For example, even though my printer has a resolution of 2400-dpi, if I were to print a 72-dpi, bitmapped image, I would still end up with grainy output (curves not smooth). This low-resolution is suitable for viewing on any monitor but not for printing. If my bitmapped image were created in a higher resolution such as 300 dpi at eight by ten inches, the image would look excellent (clear and smooth) when printed.

Vector graphics, also called object-oriented images, arrived on the Mac scene with MacDraw in 1986, and have been around ever since. With vectors, instead of working with a collection of pixels, the images are created using geometric shapes, lines and Bézier curves (named after the French mathematician, Pierre Bézier). These curves employ at least three defining points. The two endpoints of the curve are called anchor points. The others, which define the shape of the curve, are called handles, tangent points, or nodes. Attached to each handle are two control points. Moving the handles, or the control points, modifies the curve's shape. Most drawing programs support Bézier curves.

Vectors are more like magical collages with selectable shapes that can be manipulated separately. They can be picked up, moved around, and changed by size, shape, and color (fill). A vector graphic is resolution independent and can be viewed close up on a monitor without losing image integrity (no on-screen "jaggies" as happens when zooming in on a bitmapped image). Since vector graphics are a product of pure mathematical calculations, the image can be printed the size of a postcard or a billboard without losing quality or definition.

Artists and graphic designers often need to transform a bitmapped image into a vector graphic. It can be done by hand, but it's so much easier to have a controllable, automated process.

Silhouette (compatible with Mac OS 8.5 through OS X Jaguar), is available as a plug-in for Adobe Illustrator and as a standalone application. It fills the niche for what Adobe Streamline 4.0 (works in Classic mode under OS X) should have been. Ideally, Streamline would vectorize a bitmapped image (art, logo, or photo), transforming it into a vector composition of objects easily edited at the control points along the paths that make up the objects that form the shapes. Then, using a variety of selection tools, most notably the pen tool, to create and modify precise Bézier curves and line segments, the vector image can be manipulated within a favorite vector app such as Adobe Illustrator and InDesign, Macromedia Freehand and Flash, and CorelDraw.

The vectors can also be traced by hand directly using the bitmapped image as a template in the vector app. The manual approach provides more precise control over the numbers of curves, lines, and points. This control is extremely important. Too many points in a complex drawing can make editing difficult, and cause both printing issues and some of the tools not to function. Too many points on an object in Illustrator, for example, prevent the Gradient Mesh tool from working.

Another advantage to tracing by hand is the ability to organize various components of the image on different layers. This is exceedingly desirable for creating and editing images. But, even if you've got a handle on tracing Bézier curves and lines using the pen tool, it can be a time-consuming process, and especially frustrating when a deadline is at hand.

If hand tracing is not practical for the job, Silhouette is an ideal alternative. It automatically converts black and white or color bitmap images into vector designs. For fine artists wanting to take their existing, traditional work into the digital realm, or graphic artists faced with having to redesign logos or illustrations because the original files are less than perfect, it will be an app of choice at first, and then a necessity.

Using Silhouette is straightforward. The bitmapped image is opened with Silhouette (or scanned directly into the program) and the appropriate image category is selected: drawing, photo, or a mask (if, for example, the idea is to mask an image against a background of sky and lawn). Then the eyedropper tool is used to select portions of the image. Each selection you make with the eyedropper appears as color, grayscale, or black and white, in accord with the nature of the image. With each selection, Silhouette adds another color to the image. (Each color represents an additional set of paths.) This process builds layers of defining tones Silhouette will use to create the vector paths. See my car example for how this technique works.

When the process of selecting is complete, it is time to "vectorize." Silhouette transforms the pixel image into a vector graphic that can be opened in Adobe Illustrator or other vector-imaging program. Keep in mind that the more selections made with Silhouette (especially when using color artwork or photos with many subtle tones) the more complex the vector image becomes. In addition, Silhouette generated vectors appear in the vector app on one layer which could easily contain a hundred sub-paths and make editing more difficult. The idea with Silhouette is to select the minimum number of colors (paths) while still maintaining the desired look and feel of your composition.

Here's a partial list of Silhouette's correction tools that work remarkably well on less complex graphics, i.e., logos, simple line drawings, and fonts:

• Righting a logo so it is perfectly horizontal. It is never perfectly aligned when scanned.
• Sharpening corners as they are often rounded or truncated. Doing it manually with a standard program is time-consuming.
• Suppressing unnecessary points in curves while retaining the shape, thereby simplifying outlines and streamlining touching up. This saves time.
• Converting "flat curves" into straight lines. An enlarged, flat curve always reveals defects.
• Aligning segments on the same axis so that all logo base lines or letters align in one swoop.
• Smoothing tangents so that bumps, which affect geometric harmony, are not created. Detecting and correcting them is greatly simplified with Silhouette.
• Batching enables vectorizing the contents of an entire folder. It is especially useful for graphics people working in high volume situations.

Silhouette will enhance the work of fine artists and graphic designers, and pay for itself in no time. Put it on your hard drive now for a transformative experience.

Wow: Fine-tuning
If you use Adobe Illustrator and have been putting off learning how to create Bézier curves using the pen tool, then get The Illustrator 10 Wow! Book, by artist Sharon Steuer and published by Peachpit Press. It is a treasure trove of tips, hints, and tricks. Steuer's clear writing and enlightened teaching approach is inspirational toward learning Illustrator, and the pen tool in particular. Visit Steuer's Zen of the Pen website where, for a modest fee, a series of pen tool tutorials are downloadable. They will have you shaping, bending, and connecting Bézier curves like a master.

Page Sender
I can't remember the last time I sent a fax using my Mac. Once I discovered email, faxes became superfluous. I had even replaced my fax modem with a DSL modem over a year ago. Then, as I was working on my book, I had to fax a document overseas to a firm that didn't use email.

I could have gone to my local print shop, spent $4.00 per fax (more for international) and felt ripped-off. A series of faxes going back and forth would get costly.

I rifled through my stuff and found my old fax modem. I reconnected it to my computer, but my old fax software wouldn't work in OS X (nor in Classic mode). It was time to move on; it never performed well, anyway.

I read a review about an OS X (v10.1.3 or later) native fax app called Page Sender from Smile Software and tried it. After sending a few faxes, it was clear that this was a far superior application than the one I had been using. I can send faxes via emails (with PDF attachments and/or anything printable) directly from the print dialog. Page Sender also receives faxes using a fax modem, and automates sending and receiving.

Here's how I sent my fax. I opened Entourage, wrote my letter as an email, and selected Print. I chose Page Sender from the printer list in the print dialog box. The Page Sender control window opened and launched Address Book (OS X) giving access to the handy Live Addressing feature. I typed part of a name (first or last) in the Name column of the Fax envelope, and a list of possibilities was presented . I made my Fax To selection from the recipient dropdown list. I clicked print and my document was faxed overseas.

The Page Sender print interface allows users to fax nearly anything that can be printed. In this case, I dragged and dropped my fax number directly from Address Book (OS X) into the “To” panel.

Currently, Page Sender supports Live addressing with Address Book (Mac OS X 10.2 and later), Entourage, Now Contact (4.2.5 and later), Outlook Express, and Palm Desktop (4.1 and later). It works with any popular Email client and address book. Fax numbers can be dragged and dropped with Address Book, Claris E-mailer, Eudora, Mailsmith, Microsoft Entourage, Now Contact, Outlook Express, Palm Desktop, and PowerMail (including vCard files). If a fax modem isn't at hand, an option to send Page Sender faxes via subscription-based services such as eFax, jConnect, EasyLink, or MaxEmail is available.

Page Sender is available in English, Japanese, German, Italian, and French. It's a winner in any language.

Now, back to writing my book.

[Author's note: As I was writing this article, my monitor fizzled and the desktop disappeared as if sucked into a black hole in the center of my screen. It was the result of a spike surge; an event I did not anticipate. Until then, my major concern had been hard drive failure, and until my new monitor arrived, I wouldn't know if the computer had been fried as well. Although I do back up critical data with Retrospect from Dantz, there was still no way to view anything.

Did I have hard copy of phone numbers and other contact information? No. Fortunately, my G3 Beige minitower had been spared.

Don't rely totally on your digital, miracle box. Make sure you save important data on that ancient technology called paper.

The demise of the CRT monitor has been greatly exaggerated. Although the new LCD screens are taking over the market, you can get a fine CRT that's easy on your eyes and wallet. The LaCie Electron Blue IV 19 or 21-inch naturally flat CRT provides color resolution for professional users and eliminates image distortions that produce eyestrain.]

......
I have used my car to illustrate the five steps taken to convert a bitmapped graphic using Silhouette into an editable vector drawing.

This simple bitmapped photo of the car is the result of many gradations of color, which give the impression of a continuous image with smooth curves. Zooming in on a curve would reveal that its smooth appearance is actually comprised of square pixels and jaggies.

With the photo in Silhouette, I selected 12 colors with the Eyedropper tool until I got the effect shown.

After selecting the colors, I clicked vectorize and Silhouette transformed the colors into hundreds of separate objects (path shapes) as shown in this Outline View.

I opened the vectorized car image in Adobe Illustrator. The black border around amber parking light is the path of what is now a single editable object.

After selecting the parking light “object,” I used the control handles along the path to elongate the shape; adding a translucent blue gives the light design a futuristic flavor.

Working with the image in Adobe Illustrator, I selected the body, which is mostly one object path like the parking light. I applied a different color fill and effect to give the car a finish worthy of an Urban Legend.