.NYCig/Kids Computer News % St Hilda's School, 619 W 114 St, NY, NY 10025
LW_Cal & Overlay
@OnlyTheBest
by Roger Lawhorn
@from the March 1991 NYCig/Kids Computer News
Thank you
I would like to start by thanking the authors of Kids Computer News for sending me a one year subscription to their magazine. I couldn't wait to show my associate, Dale Sidebottom, the graphics catalog that I had received also! (He recently completed the task of organizing thousands of PrintShop/PrintMaster graphics in our local club library). We were impressed that you have so many wonderful graphics!
I would like to mention that Dale and I are GEOS-specific Commodore users. We use GEOS for almost everything we do. The only basic command we have not forgotten is...LOAD "GEOS",8,1 !!!
Where it all began
Last year, when I became discontented with Commodore "pirates" and trashy Bulletin Board Systems (BBS's), I decided to invest $20.00 for the annual dues to join the L.U.C.KY. User group (Louisville Users of Commodore of Kentucky). I yearned to meet others who had interests similar to mine. Though I might not be able to attend the meetings, I could still find new friends on the LUCKY BBS.
After I got on-line, I quickly found out what I could about members who owned GEOS. I had purchased GeoProgrammer recently and found it to be the finest programming package available for Commodore. I was informed by a member named PEPPER that there just happened to be someone in LUCKY who owned geoProgrammer and most everything else that Berkeley had produced. I was in heaven! I had been wanting to produce something in GEOS; but, to date, I had only made a rather simple gospel tract called WORTH. I quickly called this man and asked him about his involvement in GEOS. "Would you be interested in doing some programming?..."
big name magazine that has supported GEOS well. They sent a standard reply, "We have received your submission; please allow up to four weeks for us
Well, one year later, I am about to tell you what has transpired since that day. It seems so strange! All it took to get me started programming was to meet someone who did not know the meaning of the word "impossible". I'm ever grateful that he didn't.
Dale informed me that there was something about geoFile that "just ticked him off." You cannot print labels, or anything for that matter, in any other font than BSW 9 point. Changing geoFile to print multiple fonts was out of the question; so I agreed to write a program that would read a geoMerge data document (which can be derived from geoFile) and print labels in multiple fonts.
''Havin' fun ain't easy!''
The first few months that I worked on my program were very difficult. I seemed to spend endless nights programming and reprogramming. There were so many things I did not know about the GEOS environment. To make matters worse, geoProgrammer has some rather annoying bugs in it and the
Official GEOS Programmers Reference Guide
is the most poorly written manual on the face of the Earth. I learned to work around the geoProgrammer bugs and kept asking questions on Q-Link to find things that the reference guide did not cover.
Each time I felt that I had a working copy, Dale and I would get together and check it out. He would then make suggestions, explaining to me what additional features he would like to see in the program. Sometimes I liked his thinking and sometimes I did not, but "bouncing ideas back and forth" with a good computer friend is an important part of programming.
What next?
In six months my program was complete and I named it GEOLABEL. Dale and I agreed that it was a good program and would be worth something, but, being new at this, I did not know what to do next!
I decided to submit it to a big name magazine that has supported GEOS well. They sent a standard reply, "We have received your submission; please allow up to four weeks for us to review it."
my own software and market it. Since I had received no response from the magazine, Idecided to release GEOLABEL on my own, as well.
e last foul-up is instructive. In the older machines, BASIC's INPUT keyword would not function correctly
While waiting for them to make up their mind, I decided that I wanted to begin another project. What could Dale and I do next? There was geoTerm, geoSidPlayer (one of my spare time creations), and just about geoEverything! Then one evening I happened to mentioned to Dale that GEOS has a routine that will check to see if any pixel on the screen is on or off. Suddenly he started talking about making banners in GEOS. I stated very clearly that making a program that would work like PrintShop or PrintMaster would be too long a project, but Dale persisted. He said, "I can design my own banner at the top of a geoPaint page. I need you to design a program to pull it off the page, expand it, flip it 90 degrees, and print it out as a banner!"
We soon realized that if we could make banners, we could use the same process to create posters and greeting cards. We decided to call our program geoPrint. Dale drew the printforms and I began to write the program to print them. Because I had just written GEOLABEL, I already had most of the routines I needed. I merely had to arrange them in the proper order; and, within five days, geoPrint was 80% complete. Imagine! It took six months to write my first application and less than six days to nearly complete my second!
There couldn't have been two more excited people than we were when we printed our first banner within GEOS. Up until that time, only PrintShop and PrintMaster could produce certain types of documents such as banners, posters, and greeting cards quickly. Dedicated GEOS users no longer would have to leave the GEOS environment to create these things! It felt doubly good to see our program produce banners that the "Print" programs could not touch! We demonstrated geoPrint to our LUCKY Users Group and received round after round of applause for banners, posters, greeting cards, and "GiantPosters!"
OnlyTheBest Is Born
After writing geoSidPlayer and geoPrint, I felt that I had enough public support within the GEOS community to produce my own software and market it. Since I had received no response from the magazine, Idecided to release GEOLABEL on my own, as well.
e last foul-up is instructive. In the older machines, BASIC's INPUT keyword would not function correctly
I only want to produce the best software I can; so "OnlyTheBest" became the goal and the name of my company. I began to advertise my programs on Q-Link, and representatives of several Commodore magazines asked to review copies. I have received good reviews in geo-specific magazines and good responses from GEOS users across the country and in Canada.
The Future
My latest project has been SuperBox, which enables the GEOS file-box to access up to 255 files on the disk instead of just 15, as it currently does. As of this writing, SuperBox 2.0 for the 64 is finished. Those who own a 1581 disk drive can appreciate the usefulness of this program. That is because this drive, with 790K of memory, can easily hold the 144 file limit that GEOS supports. (Commodore basic will allow up to 296 files.) I soon hope to find time to finish the 128 version.
However, I am presently working on geoPrint 2.0. This version will support printing in
@color
. You will also be able to select the pattern you want to use when printing banners and GiantPosters! Think about it. The big square dots that banners are made of can be printed in any of the 32 patterns GEOS offers!
The future is bright and exciting for those of us who love computing with the Commodore 64 & 128. I think this is particularly true of those working in the GEOS environment! I hope you have a great year and enjoy the opportunities for learning that a GREAT computer club like yours provides.
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