FAQS! FACTS! FAX!  284 (11/10/01)

Q

I bought a copy of Via Voice from a Telegraph offer, and now I've finally got around to installing it, I get the message "A required .DLL file, SMAPI.DLL was not found". Could you please help, in words of one syllable, as I am a complete computer moron, in fact a retired farmer who started with horses, (tractors were a bad move…).

John Youngman

A

Solving a PC problem using words of one syllable? Glad to see that you farmers – even retired one's – haven't lost their sense of humour… This will definitely make you laugh. Your problem is quite common and the solution is actually very simple, and it can be found at: http://www.support.lotus.com/

sims2.nsf/ 852561c1006719a98525614100588964/ bcbf598f90874a7585256799006be9d8? OpenDocument

To save you keying in what must be one of the world's longest Internet addresses the trick is to open Windows Explorer, work your way to C:\Lotus\ViaVoice\Bin, click on and highlight SMAPI.DLL, click Copy on the Toolbar then go to C:\Windows\System, open it then click on Paste, reboot the PC and all should be well.

Q

I recently read somewhere about a site from which I can download Hogarthian-style fonts but cannot for the life of me find out where it was.  I've tried the Electronic Telegraph archive under "antique fonts", "18th century fonts" or even "old fonts" but can't now find anything. 
Philip Cole, London, W9

A

I'm not sure about 'Hogarthian' as a font description but I have found a good source of old fonts and typefaces at: http://www.waldenfont.com/

Q

I copy a lot of music and speeches onto Mini Disc. Is there such a thing as  MiniDisc recorder/player deck that will fit inside a PC?

Patrick Nishio

A

There are MiniDisc decks that will fit into standard PC drive bays but these are for data storage applications and will not handle MD audio files. However, Sony make a compact MD player/recorder with PC connectivity, the MDS-PC3 comes with a USB cable and file management software, so you can copy music files between MDs and your PC's hard disc. You can find out more by typing the mode number into the Search field at: http://www.sony.co.uk/products/

Q

Further to the query in F!F!F! from Norma Rowerson (September 27th) regarding producing slides from prints, using a PC. Here is a solution, which will give superb results with a little experimentation and a reasonable quality 35mm single lens reflex camera, 30 - 70mm zoom lens, tripod and cable release. PC monitors are high quality display devices and by photographing an image directly from the screen you can end up with almost professional results.

Scan the photographs you want to put on film at 150dpi. Save them as jpg's and import them into PowerPoint where you can then use the slide show option to fill the monitor screen with your image.

In a darkened room (to reduce reflections) line up the camera parallel and centred to your monitor and frame the image to fill your viewfinder. You will have small black areas left and right of frame because a monitor is squarer than a 35mm slide,

Use Kodak Ektachrome slide film (Daylight Balanced, this is important) available from any good camera shop and a shutter speed of a quarter second or less. The camera's internal exposure meter should give you the best aperture to use but I always bracket i.e. shoot a frame one stop darker and another one stop lighter. It is important to use a cable release to keep the camera steady.

Every large town will have a professional film laboratory that can develop your film in a couple of hours and even put it in slide mounts if that's what you need.

Christopher Littler, Stockport

I suggest Norma Rowerson has a look at:
www.abstractconcreteworks.com\

essays\scanning\Backlighter.html.  

There is a series of articles on the subject.
E. Boardman

A

Thanks to everyone who wrote in with suggestions

Q
Having scanned two documents totalling 500 Kb in TIFF format I am trying to send them by E-mail but after sending 20% of the file (100Kb) has been sent it stops although I am still on line. Apparently the file is too large and I need to change the format to a compressed one such as JPEG but how do I effect the change?

G. Nash

A

In most picture editor and viewer programs (Paintbox Pro, Photoshop, ACDSee, PhotoSuite etc., and Paint in later versions of Windows 98 and ME) all you have to do is open the image then select Save As from the File menu and change the format to *.jpg in the 'Save As Type' drop-down menu.

Q

If I scan negatives, is there a program that will "print" them by turning them into positives?
Andrew May

A

No problem, most picture editor programs (see above) and even Windows Paint has a negative or 'invert' function.

Q

Is there a quick way to delete Address Book entries in Outlook Express?  Also, it seems that many entries are repeated in different, or even the same, form. Why isn't there just one entry for each address?  Emails, which I have deleted without opening, knowing them to be junk mail, also seem to be appearing there.  Is this inevitable or is there a way to prevent this?  I spent hours this week deleting hundreds of entries individually (ending up with a sore wrist!) and I am sure many of them had never been invited into my computer by me.
Rosemary Marshall

A

You can bulk erase entries in Address Book simply by holding down the Ctrl key as you highlight entries then delete them all at once. By default Outlook Express adds the address of anyone you reply to, you can switch this off by going to Options on the Tools menu and select the Send tab. I'm not aware of a mechanism whereby addresses from unopened mail could have got into the Address Book, suggestions and theories welcome!

Q

Some weeks ago I wrote a letter on our word processor, which I then printed out and save. It was never e-mailed to anyone. Some weeks later three people received garbled e-mails supposedly from us, two of which included a sentence or part sentence directly out of the letter I had previously written and saved.

Two of the three recipients are in our address book but the third one, who is currently working in Japan and is know to us, is not on our address book nor did we have any idea of her e-mail address.

At the time when the two people who are on our address book received their e-mails, we had not e-mailed either of them for sometime. Can you help?

John & Margaret Clarke

A

This sort of activity has all the hallmarks of a 'mass-mailer' email worm or virus such as  'Kak', 'IloveYou', 'SirCam' and most recently 'Nimda'. Following infection the worm replicates by attaching itself to emails, which it sends using the host PCs address book. The only way to stop this kind of thing happening is to make sure that your anti-virus software is kept up to date and be very wary of opening email attachments, especially if they have unfamiliar file extensions.

Q

The Windows calculator seems to be lacking one common function of pocket calculators. To find the percentage represented by one number divided by another, which is normally x/y% on a pocket calculator, has to be calculated as x/y*100. Calculator can find a percentage of a number, but not a number as a percentage of another number using the single per cent keystroke instead of four keystrokes (*100). Or am I missing something??

Ken Grace

A

I think I understand what you mean but I'll pass on that one and open it up to our more mathematically inclined readers…