FAQS! FACTS! FAX!  190 (09/12/99)

PAWS FOR THOUGHT

With reference to the problem of Mandy Fox's cat urinating on her computer keyboard (F!F!F! November 25) Celia Haddon in Pet Subjects deals with the problem of a cat scent-marking new objects so that they become part of their home territory. The suggestion is that you keep the cat away from new objects until they have acquired your smell. Another method is to stroke your cat around the chin area with a piece of cotton cloth then wipe the cloth on the new object, which makes it smell of the cat. If the cat does not co-operate the article suggests you get some Fellway spray and put that on the item. To cats it smells of the gland under their chin and cats do not urinate where they rub their chins.

Derek Duchemin

Cats react in strange ways to the smell of some plastics. My wife's (female) cat delights in licking plastic carrier bags. According to an Internet c(h)at the smell gives them the hots. This otherwise clean-living cat will occasionally pee on the neighbour's rubberised shower mat.

John Maughan]

I would suggest that the cat is indicating its displeasure with the fact that it now has no mouse to play with. Therefore get an imitation mouse that you can leave by the keyboard for the cat to play with.
Jim Harmer

We have recently developed software called PawSense, to keep cats off computer keyboards. It analyses key-press combinations and timings to determine when a cat climbs onto your keyboard. When a cat is detected, the utility plays a cat-annoying sound to repel the feline. It was originally developed to stop cats from typing random text and keyboard command shortcuts. More information is available at: http://www.bitboost.com/pawsense or http://www.pawsense.com
Chris Niswander, BitBoost Systems

Many thanks for the (mostly) humane suggestions…

CLEAN OUTLOOK

When I want to spring clean Outlook Express by deleting old files, I appear to have to go through each file and delete it individually. I would prefer to delete them in bulk through Windows Explorer as this would be much more efficient but I can't find them. In which folder are they held?

Denis Wilson

A

They can normally be found in Program Files > Outlook Express > Default User > Mail. The file structure is slightly unusual because Inbox and Outbox folders exist in pairs, with extensions *idx (index) and *mbx (mailbox), which makes life rather difficult. It's much easier to delete files from within Outlook Express. Use the Select All command on the Edit menu to highlight everything then hold down the Ctrl key and de-select the messages you want to keep. Alternatively click on entries you want to delete but keep the Ctrl key depressed, so you can create highlighted blocks, then press the delete button.

UNWANTED SERVICES

I would like to get rid of the OnLine Services icon from the Desktop and also its folders comprising AOL Free Trial, AT&T WorldNet, CompuServe, WOW and the OnLine Services ReadMe. I don't want any of these and they take up 14.1Mb of hard disk space, but I am worried about any side effects by deleting them, as they don't appear in My Computer -Control Panel - Add/Remove Programs.
Malcolm Muir

A

They should all be listed in Add/Remove Programs but on the Windows Setup tab under OnLine Services. You can safely delete unwanted ReadMe text files using Windows Explorer. This gets rid of some of the clutter but the motherload lies in Windows > Options > Cabs. Here you will find over 30Mb of files to delete, specifically: CS3kit.exe and Wowkit.exe (CompuServe) and Setup32.exe plus Setup251.exe (AOL). You can safely zap them with Delete in Windows Explorer but you should wait a day or two to make sure everything is working properly before emptying the Recycle Bin. 

GOING DOTTY

In F!F!F! November 25 you ask about inserting a dot under a letter. This is not easy, so check to see if the character you want is in one of the symbols lists - the new Tahoma font set which contains the Euro symbol has some vowels with the dot beneath them. You can get this update from
http://www.eu.microsoft.com/windows/euro.asp

Otherwise, try this method. Type the character you want to put the dot under.Put a full-stop after it, followed by a space, followed by any other letters you want then highlight the full-stop only. Select Format, followed by Font and the Character Spacing tab. You need to lower the full-stop by a couple of points, go to the Position box and choose Lowered In the adjacent box select 2 pts and click OK. Next highlight the space to the right of the full stop. Return to the Character Spacing tab, in the Spacing box select Expanded and enter a value of 6 pt. Leave the Position line at Normal. Click OK. Highlight the letter to the left of the full stop; select, Format, Font and on the Character Spacing tab go to Spacing and select Condensed. In the box to the right enter 3 pt. Leave the Position line at Normal. Click OK.

You may have to play around with the numbers, depending which font you are using. If you create a Word document with a series of these and any other special symbols that you frequently use for your work and then save it, you can just copy and paste them into any of your new documents without having to recreate them from scratch.
Roy Venkatesh

The problem can be solved using the Equation Editor, which is by no means the best method, but effective nevertheless. The text can be entered as normal within the Equation Editor and using the 'Subscript and superscript templates' the position of the dot can be set for the required text (option 2 along, 3 down). The dots within 'operator symbols' can be also used for this purpose.
Richard Firm

A dot placed centrally beneath the letter h is possible using WordPerfect 5.1's subscript and overstrike facilities with the following sequence of keystrokes:
(Shift-F8), 4, 5, 1, h, (Ctrl-F8), 1, 2. , (Ctrl-F8), 1, 2, (Enter), F7
Geoff Perry

A

Thanks for the many and varied suggestions, now here's one for Mac experts to ponder

HALF MAD…

I am going mad trying to create simple fractions (half, quarter, three-quarters). My machine is an Apple Macintosh PowerPC 5400. The running system is 7.5.5. The font I am using is Helvetica Standard, which is provided with the system. I am running Adobe ATM De Luxe version 4.0. There is no ligature or symbol for fractions as a smart-key stroke. I have tried composing fractions using superscript with subscript but the result looks lop-sided and when I attempt to fine-align text, such multi-part attempts move in strange ways. Is there anybody who can provide an answer to what is surely a simple problem?
Arthur W. J. G. Ord-Hume

STRIKE A CHORD

In 1970, whilst part of the Kettering Group I was able to partially decode the scientific telemetry from the first Chinese satellite which played the tune "Tung Fang Hung" (The East is Red) and subsequently published the result in Nature. In those days I had to write the tune freehand on manuscript paper.  I now have a need to produce a vugraph for a forthcoming lecture and I wonder if you could direct me to a source of computer graphics musical notation for this purpose?
Geoff Perry

A

Everything you need, and much more besides can be found on the music notation shareware listings at the Hitsquad Internet site: http://www.hitsquad.com/smm/win95/NOTATION/