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One of the killer features in OSX is its ability to save files in adobe is Portable Document Format (PDF). I expect that we will see many shareware applications tap into this feature in innovative ways. One such program is. Page Sender presents a fully-functional E-mail or fax envelope when you print - just fill in the envelope, click "Print", and your document is on its way. Page Sender E-mails printouts as PDF Files, viewable with Adobe Acrobat Reader on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. 
Developed by Smile Software, Page Sender takes the hassle out of sending documents. E-mail your documents in a format anyone can read using your favorite E-mail client. Fax your documents using your fax modem or any of the popular fax-by-Email services. Page Sender allows you to send anything you can print with Mac OS X as an E-mail or fax.
Features
I tried it out the e-mail feature by sending a message to myself. Basic email send:
1. In any Mac OS X application, select Print from the File menu.
2. Click the Open Address Book button. 3. Drag an address into the white area below Name and Address. 4. Enter a subject. 5. Press the Print button. In a moment, a new message appears in your email application addressed to whomever you chose in Step 1, and it will have an attached PDF of what you just printed. 
6. Edit the message if you wish and send it as you normally would from your E-mail application. It was easy, and certainly simpler than first saving a file as PDF using Text Edit or some other Cocoa application, and then transferring the file to an email client as an attachment. Here is the PDF attachment received on my other PowerBook. It worked fine, but did not respond to a double click to start Acrobat Reader -- I hade to start the application first and then drag the document to its icon. 
There are also a variety of advanced email send features. See the application documentation. I did not try the Page Sender Fax function because I only have one phone line, so there was no convenient way to test results. Sending by Fax uses the same interface, and should be equally intuitive, although of course the recipients doesn't get a PDF through Fax. Here are some Fax-related excerpts from the program documentation:
Page Sender Fax Center allows you to monitor faxes you've sent via fax modem and to set Page Sender preferences.
The Fax Center window presents a list of faxes and their status. If there is a number next to the status field, it indicates the attempt number in progress (for example, Sending (2) indicates that the second attempt to send that fax is in progress).
Page Sender will make 3 attempts in immediate succession to deliver a fax. The Log window shows detailed feedback from efax, the Unix utility used to send faxes.
The Fax Number and Station Name appear at the top of any faxes you send. Generally, the fax number is of the format: +1 408 884 2320 where 1 is the country code and 408 is the area/city code. Generally the station name is all caps; for example: SMILE SOFTWARE.
Select the Modem Type you are using and specify your preferred Speaker Behavior and Speaker Volume.
Expert users may wish to set the Initialization String being careful to precede separate entries with "-i". If your modem is made by one of the manufacturers in the list, you may get better performance by choosing it from the Flow Control popup.
The Dialing Prefix should always start with T unless you are using a rotary phone line. If you are behind a PBX system, you may need to use T9, to dial 9 and pause for an outside line. If you need to dial a PIN or long distance access code after the number, use Dialing Postfix. Specify your Country Code, Area Code (city code), International Dialing Prefix (IDD), and Domestic Long Distance Prefix (DDD) so that Page Sender may dial correctly.
New in version 1.1:
Page Sender is $19.95 shareware
You can find the latest version of Page Sender and technical support at:
Latin From David Deckert Hi Charles, I don't really have much to say about the numbers on your comparo, since time-to-load-a-page ranks about last on my list of what's important to me in a browser. The browser's ability to quickly load the page after it's been downloaded is I think what you were after since you cleared the caches. You might have had a better indicator of "browser speed" if you would have removed the Internet connection variable entirely. I understand that the host computer's speed plays a role in this that can't be removed. On the other hand I can see wanting to specifically see which browsers would at least display something during a slow download, instead of waiting for the full page to arrive in memory before showing anything at all, like IE normally does. But even that is still basically unrelated to the overall start-to-finish render speed of an HTML document. When considering browsers I tend to concentrate more on time-to-launch (in OS 9, where I don't keep everything running very long) and the app's overall responsiveness (which makes anything with the Gecko engine a total non-starter for me, despite its fast page rendering) and stability. How it parses HTML is vital, but since no browser can render all web pages correctly, like many people I keep several in my toolbox. Ads in Opera? I can't afford the screen real estate. iCab as default? Maybe one day, if they ever release a version they consider worthy of more than a few months' lifespan. iCab is the one I want to love, if only it wouldn't crash so often, for me. See how different experiences can completely change what someone will claim as the real pecking order? I would love to one day see your articles have a disclaimer or to two that admits that just perhaps, your experience doesn't speak as the absolute reference for how a piece of software will always perform. I do not think that's implied simply because the nature of the text might be under the auspices of a "review" or "editorial." For that reason, your "IE defender" has come calling again. Please understand my dispute is not with your test results or anti-MS-simply-because-it's-MS remark. It's a factual error unrelated to the article's focus, but IS nonetheless the result the anti-MS blinders you wear:
Although this is the common theme whenever your articles mention IE, it hasn't been true for a long time, actually. It's getting tiresome. Yes, the first version of IE 5 (the one I think you briefly tried then gave up on a few years ago) did introduce two extensions. The current version, 5.1 , puts nothing in your System Folder except for new fonts and the cache of course in Preferences. The immediately previous version ( 5.02? The long-running in-between version but still with the old splash screen) also didn't put extensions into the Extensions folder. So, did Microsoft find a way to do without the extensions? No, they're just now kept inside the folder that IE resides in. It hasn't used the MS First Run installer for a long time. OE 5.x always installs four extensions the first time it's run, just like the old days, but doesn't absolutely require them to be there. After the first run, the extensions can safely be moved to OE's folder. So in other words it is entirely possible to easily set up an older Mac with MS's Internet 5.x software and never have any MS extensions present in the System Folder. This also means that unless OE or IE is running, none of those extensions can in any way interact with the rest of the computer. MS Office behaves much the same way, even though its numerous extensions might need to stay in the Extensions folder. Haven't tested that yet. The shared libraries by the way, are shared only between the various MS applications as needed, not everything else at large. We are light years beyond Office 4.2.1. This is evident in that if you launch an Office 98/2001 application or OE 5, any missing extensions are installed and loaded into memory for use right away. No restart is required, and no message comes up saying something is missing and you need to restart. For that reason it's highly unlikely the extensions would hang around in memory when the application in question is quit. They are only called when the app is launched, and serve no other use otherwise. Given how IE now behaves, I doubt it's any different. I understand it continues to be popular to be anti-MS with us Mac-heads. I also despise many of their business practices. The products are another matter, and I can separate the product from the company when I can put it into perspective. If I could not I would probably also never buy another car, electricity, commercially produced food, clothing or even Apple computers. No one is completely clean, the harder you look. Why concentrate then on one company? It's one thing for a reader to recognize a writer's inherent bias against a certain product. The problem with that is not merely that by definition it prevents the product from receiving a fair shake, but that the bias has to then cast an unrealistic glow on the remaining competitors. Your factual error was simply the hint of that. Thanks again for the warning. I love that we have anti-MS choices, and tend to seek out alternatives also. But I also appreciate that several Mac users choose MS software and can't comprehend turning it down if it happens to be the right tool for the job. After all, that's why I use a Macintosh. Support or recognition of MS' Mac Business Unit has less to do with support of Microsoft as a whole than of Apple as a platform. I'm not certain I agree with the folks who say that without the Mac BU there would be no Mac OS, but there is more of a grain of truth to it yet. Looked at another way, we aren't supporting or subsidizing Windows in any way by using MS software on a Mac. -David
Hi David;
For me, raw download speed of non-cached pages is my paramount priority. I actually use the little text-only browser WannaBe for about half my surfing for that reason.
Startup times are of less relevance for me. The Geckos do start up slowly in OS 9, but I start 'em and leave 'em running between restarts -- usually about once every five days or so. There's not much in it with OS X. The Geckos start slower than the others, but we're talking 4-5 seconds difference, and in OS X I sometimes leave them running for weeks anyway.
Hmmm. I wonder why iCab crashes so much on your machine. I find that it goes down occasionally and gently -- never forces a restart. The ad doesn't bother me in Opera. I use the ad-supported version of Eudora too.
As for IE; it's been a while, but seem to I recall dumping a lot more than four extensions when I trashed it from my OS 9 machine. Could have been residue from an earlier version I guess. The last IE I used (about six months) was 5.0. Of course, there may be MS extensions that IE shares with other MS apps when they're present. I don't use any MS software save for an ancient copy of Word 5.1 very occasionally.
Whatever, I enjoyed an instant stability improvement after getting rid of the MS stuff. My rationale for avoiding MS software is about 60 percent ideological and 40 percent functional. I just plain dislike the way MS software works, and I detest their (lack of) corporate ethics. I don't dispute that other corporations have shortcomings in that department as well, but Microsoft is an extreme case, as has been proven in court over and over again. Most corporations are not being sued by the federal government and a bunch of states for sleazy business practices. And the power of a gorilla as big as Microsoft to distort and manipulate markets scares me. The boycott will continue.
Including IE in that browser shootout was the first time I had commented on current hands-on experience with MS software in nearly two years. I usually just ignore it. I don't profess to be knowledgable about optimizing or even using IE, OE, Word, Excel, etc. I simply don't have any experience with them or interest in getting any.
Using MS software on a Mac does subsidize Microsoft, if not Windows directly. In some ways I think the Linux folks are fortunate in not having the distraction of MS software availability. Healthier for the platform in the long run, IMHO.
Charles From Pete Ottman Charles, As always I enjoy reading your writings but have to disagree a bit with your comment: "Which is a roundabout way of illustrating that Latin is not irrelevant, and that some knowledge of Latin is a requirement for true English literacy." English as a language has borrowed from many languages either by adoption or invasion, including Latin-based languages like French and Spanish, but at its root is squarely in the Germanic branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Despite the attempts over the years to cram English grammar into a Latin model, it remains Germanic. Knowledge of Latin may help with understanding the Latin/French influence (words etc) but it is hardly a requirement for true English literacy. Of course, all this hinges upon how one defines true literacy.
take care,
Hi Pete;
No argument with your factual assertions. You summed things up nicely in your last sentence.
Charles
The OS X Odyssey archives may be accessed here: Note: Letters to Moore's Mailbag may or may not be published at the editor's discretion. Correspondents' email addresses will NOT be published unless the correspondent specifically requests publication. Letters may be edited for length and/or context. Opinions expressed in postings to Moore's MailBag are those of the respective correspondents and not necessarily shared or endorsed by the Editor and/or Applelinks management. If you would prefer that your message not appear in Moore's Mailbag, we would still like to hear from you. Just clearly mark your message "NOT FOR PUBLICATION," and it will not be published. CM
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