Computers

I started using the Macintosh in January of 1984, while I was a student at Bowling Green State University. Actually, we had either an early model or an early release of the “Macintosh XL” software package for the Apple Lisa in December of 1983, as I recall. During one afternoon of waiting in line for a keypunch at the computer lab, I read all three of the manuals that came with the first Mac. This made me an expert instantly, I suppose, since most people never read the manuals! Even though I was working primarily as a technical writer, this was also my first real experience doing technical support. Because I had to learn and understand what I was documenting, I was often asked to help some of the faculty and staff when they had questions.

My favorite computer is still the Apple Macintosh. As my primary computer, I'm running Mac OS X 10.3.5 “Panther” on my “TiBook” PowerBook G4/667. It combines the power of a RISC processor, with the efficiency of a UNIX-like kernel, and combines the power of UNIX with the ease of use of the Macintosh. One of the benefits of this is that it allows me to run a variety of both commercial and open source applications on the same machine.

I have been involved in the MacinTech Users Group for Apple Macintosh users for many years. Check out the link for Macintech in the navigation bar on the left.

I also have an older “Beige” G3/266 desktop that I got from a consulting client when he replaced it with a G4. I primarily use it for Mac OS X 10.2.8 Server, but its also loaded with MacOS 9.2.2 and Yellow Dog Linux 3.0.1. Although its starting to show its age, its stuffed with 640Mb of RAM, which helps a lot! The main drive is a 40Gb ATA, with a 9Gb SCSI drive for YDL. Its also has a USB and FireWire combo card, so this machine offers nearly every interface ever available on the Mac: ADB, SCSI, ATA, USB, and FireWire.

My first exposure to UNIX was in college at BGSU, where I worked for the University Computer Services department as a student “Documentation Assistant.” We had a DEC VAX 11/785 that was running 4.2 BSD. While I was there, it was upgraded to 4.3 BSD, and then to DEC Ultrix. The first set of Ultrix manuals that we received were the same as the 4.3 BSD set, except for the cover! Even the footer on every page still said 4.3 BSD!

Since my first experiences with UNIX were with BSD, and Mac OS X is based on BSD UNIX, I have also developed an interest in the open-source operating system FreeBSD. I'm running an AMD-based machine at home (I refuse to refer to this as a “PC” as this has too many negative connotations!) that I assembled myself. I'm tracking FreeBSD 5.3-CURRENT at the moment, as I'm using a serial ATA hard drive that wasn't supported in the 4.9-STABLE branch.

Here are the specifications:

I've also got an aging Dell laptop with a couple of interchangeable hard drives. One of the drives has FreeBSD 5.2-Current, so that I can use 32-bit CardBus PC Cards. While its not a very fast machine by today's standards, it runs just fine with FreeBSD!

I am also using an old Intel Pentium Pro/200 HP Vectra with FreeBSD 4.9-STABLE as my print server. Its running lpd, with a print filter script to use GhostScript as a PostScript interpreter, using an Epson Stylus Color 850 inkjet printer for output. Since lpd is running as a network service, this combination effectively works as a networked, color PostScript printer! The print filter script is based on the sample from Greg Lehey's The Complete FreeBSD book, which I've found to be extremely helpful!

I spent quite a bit of time working on that BSD UNIX system at BGSU, as it was the only way to print to the Imagen 8/300 laser printer! It was an early Canon engine, but I'm not certain what page description languages it supported. I wrote most of my documentation on the VAX, using vi to edit the text, and troff (actually it was ditroff) to process the output. One of the manuals that I prepared was a guide to all of the computing facilities on campus, including many tables, so I used the tbl and eqn packages from the Documenter's Workbench as pre-processors.

Unix Text Processing, by Dale Dougherty and Tim O'Reilly, was published by Hayden Books in 1987, back when O'Reilly & Associates wrote technical documentation for hire. Hayden later took the book out of print, but Dale and Tim retained the copyright and have decided to make it available through our web site under Creative Commons' Attribution License. It's available through O'Reilly & Associates Open Books project as a PDF of scanned images (about 27Mb.) of the original document.

Some members of the groff mailing list have transcribed the document back into its original source, with the intention of updating the material. They have posted the source, along with PostScript and PDF versions on Larry Koller's website.

I'm also interested in DocBook, a standard generalized markup language (SGML) system for text processing that can produce output for HTML and printed output like RTF or PDF from the same source. It is also focused on content markup, rather than stylistic appearance. The formatting is done by applying DSSSL stylesheets using the OpenJADE engine, such as the set that Norm Walsh maintains for DocBook.

The DocBook source can be edited as plain text in any text editor, including vi or EMACS. There are major mode editing modules available for EMACS that simplify the tag markup. Other specialized editors are available for some platforms, such as SoftQuad's XMetaL editor for Windows, XMLspy or the shareware utility UltraEdit. There are also a number of Java-based editors like Xerlin.

Markus Hoenicka has written up a fabulous tutorial on installing all of the SGML/XML tools that you need to process DocBook on Windows, either standalone or with the Cygwin tools. It hasn't been updated in a while, but its still a good outline to work from. There are newer versions of many of the tools, so be sure to grab the current ones!

Mezis has gathered several XML-related tools out there in order to build a comprehensive DocBook processing package, initially for the team at Project:Omega. The result of this work is the DocBook-X package. There is also a tutorial. For the Website DTD, I use xsltproc on Mac OS X from www.Zveno.com.

Another interest, though certainly not an area of expertise, is Geographic Information Systems and digital mapping. I have an old copy of DeLorme StreetAtlas for Macintosh, which is only runs as a “classic” application. I also have GPSy for the Macintosh, which has also not been updated for OS X yet.

I'd like to learn the GRASS GIS application once I have time to get it configured. GRASS is a very powerful, open source GIS package, comparable to ESRI ArcInfo in terms of features and capabilities. It can run on either my FreeBSD machines or on Mac OS X.

I'm also using ESRI ArcExplorer, a lightweight GIS data viewer developed by ESRI. This freely available software offers an easy way to perform basic GIS functions to display, query, as well as data retrieval. It supports a wide variety of standard data sources, and is available as a Java application on a variety of platforms. I'm running it on both Mac OS X and FreeBSD (Using the Linux installer).

I have a Garmin GPS III receiver that I use when off-roading, camping and hiking. It has built-in maps with sufficient detail for highway driving, and creates its own “breadcrumb” trail to follow back when off-highway. There is also a serial interface that can connect the GPS to a computer (with a string of adapters) so that mapping software can read the coordinates from the receiver. National Geographic has finally released a version of Topo! that is Mac OS X compatible.