Alessandro Levi Montalcini - Frequently Asked Questions

USB OVERDRIVE

Please go to the USB Overdrive support page for the latest information and news.

KEYQUENCER

The latest non-Binary version of KQ is 1.2.2a. There is no manual in the old shareware version, although the package contains a couple of quick introductions written by third parties. The new shareware and commercial versions, on the other hand, come with a very detailed and helpful manual and a whole lot of great new features and improvements.

If you can't get your first macro up and running, chances are you didn't install KQ correctly; check the control panel's online documentation again to make sure that everything is in the right place, verify that KQ is enabled if you're using an extensions manager, then restart your Mac. If you only get messages like "syntax error or unloaded extension", then KeyQuencer didn't find its extensions at startup; all the extensions should be in a folder named "KeyQuencer Extensions" inside the System folder.

I had no reports of incompatibilities with any version of the system software or any Macintosh models; KQ runs fine on all systems from 6.0.7 up to the latest 8.0, on both 68K and Power Macs. The only exception are the third-party extensions written by Didier Cabuzel, which were compiled for 68020 processors and will crash at startup on any 68000-based Macs such as the Classic, SE and PowerBook 100.

SIMPLETEXT COLOR MENU

The current version should work with SimpleText versions 1.1, 1.1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.3.1 and 1.4. If you can't install the Color Menu, make sure you have a clean copy of any of the above versions of SimpleText.

And no, I can't break the 32K size limit of SimpleText. This limit comes from the TextEdit engine which is built into the Macintosh operating system, and there's no way to work around it inside SimpleText.

There's also no way to fix the broken Undo command in SimpleText 1.4.

Check out Style by Marco Piovanelli or Tex-Edit Plus by Tom Bender if you want a cool text editor with color, styles and no 32K limit.

DRAGANYWINDOW

There's no way I can force other people's applications to redraw their window contents when you move a modal dialog in front of them. This is something that all applications should take care of (it's clearly explained in the Inside Macintosh manuals), but unfortunately many current programs don't do it right. The same problem arises if you start a screen saver when one such application is displaying a dialog box. Please don't write to me about this, but rather write to the authors of the application; they should update the program to take care of update events when displaying a dialog. On the other hand, most programs that use movable dialogs (the kind that has a title bar) usually do it right.

DISTRIBUTING MY PROGRAMS ON CD-ROMS OR FLOPPY DISKS

All my programs that are distributed as shareware, postcardware and freeware can be published on non-commercial CD-ROMs and floppy disks as long as they are not modified and their original documentation is unaltered.

I always appreciate getting a copy of the magazines, books or CD-ROMS where my stuff is published, but this is not required if you can't do so. Please feel free to publish my shareware and freeware stuff on any magazine or CD-ROM collection and consider sending me a complimentary copy if at all possible.