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Text File | 2006-10-19 | 11KB | 168 lines

     ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN MICROPENDIUM
     P.O. Box 1343  Round Rock TX 78680
     Phone [phone]
     Internet [e-mail]

MICROREVIEW FOR JULY 1994
by Charles Good
------------------------
DORTIG DISK #2 by Dorset TI User Group

    To the best of my knowledge there are two TI user groups in the UK.  A
national group, chaired by Stephen Shaw, publishes a nice newsletter which is
well known to many in the USA.  The smaller group is limited to the county of
Dorset, and communicates with the outside world via its humerous disks of
public domain utilities.  Mr. J. Murphey, Treavor, and the other lads of DORTIG
have recently released their second such disk.

     Everything is in extended basic.  When you first DSK1.LOAD you are given
the choice of a full introduction with "a lot of rubbish" or a menu of
applications with "not so much rubbish" The "lot of rubbish" choice is so funny
that the first time I saw it I burst out laughing several times during its
execution.  I was in my living room at the time, and the rest of my family
wanted to know what was so funny.  I couldn't describe in words the cause of
my chortles.  All I could say was, "Come here and look at this thing."

    Here is the "lot of rubbish" scenario.  Text of the DORTIG lads'
conversation appears at the bottom of the otherwise black screen.  You quickly
figure out that the lads are INSIDE the disk drive.  Ten pairs of eyes appear.
It is determined that someone out there wants to see a menu on the disk.  One
of the lads is assigned the task of putting the needle on the disk.  Another is
supposed to work the little red disk drive light.  The rest get on the tread
mill to start spinning the disk.  You see the eyes of the lads moving faster
and faster across the screen as the disk gradually gets up to speed.  Finally
the (on screen) red light starts to glow and an application menu appears.
This all is really quite funny, with a definately British flavor (oops,
flavour) to the humour.

     In addition to several graphic demos, there are some useful applications on
the disk.  My favorite is the program to randomly assign matches to teams in a
round robin bowling tournament.  This is for British lawn bowling, not our
familiar  10 pin bowling, but it will work for any multi game league team
sporting event such as baseball or basketball.  The soccor world cup series,
currently touring the United States, could have used this software to determine
which country plays which in each round.  You enter the names of the teams and
the number of games each team is to play.  The computer then randomly creates
play lists matching teams against each other for the required number of games.
This may be a unique application in the TI world.  I don`t remember seeing
another TI program that does this.  The DORTIG #2 disk also has a nice program
to keep track of automobile expenses and gasoline (oops, petrol) mileage on a
month by month basis.  Accounts are maintained for business and personal car
expenses, and the program handles petrol amounts entered either as gallons or
liters.  Data are displayed on screen and can be printed at any time with a
screen dump.

     I'll send you the DORTIG #2 for $1.  It is public domain.  However the lads
give their address in the "lots of rubbish" section and would be grateful for
any correspondence or tokens of appreciation you want to send their way.
----------------
KANJI DRILL by Don Shorock

     We live in a small world with a global economy.  It is not possible nor
desirable to isolate our country's economy from those of other countries
because much of our prosperity depends on international trade.  For example,
look inside 99/4A console or peripheral sometime and note how many of the chips
are from Malasia, El Salvador, and other far away places.  As competitors in a
world economy we cannot assume that the rest of the world will deal with us on
our own terms. Specifically, we cannot assume that the rest of the world speaks
English.  If we want to sell our exports in other countries we need speak and
write in the local languages of these countries.  Many citizens of european and
pacific asian countries are multilingual.  In these countries, training in a
second language is required in high school.  Not so in the USA! In fact you can
earn a liberal arts bachelor's degree from many of our best universities
without any kind of foreign language requirement.  Most USA citizens are not
multilingual and this puts us at a disadvantage in a global economy.  One of
the most important participants in this global economy is Japan.

    Don Shorock has written for the 99/4A foreign language drill programs in a
number of languages.  His on screen Japanese Kana drill software that uses the
TEII to speak Japanese and his Japanese Writing System for printing Japanese to
a printer have received supurb reviews.  His newest offering is Kanji drill.
There are 881 separate Kanji symbols, the majority of which are available for
on screen viewing in Kanji drill.

    The user is presented on screen with four Kanji symbols, one English
translation, and asked which symbol matches the English.  meanings.  If you
select the wrong symbol you get to try again until you are correct.  You then
get another random group of four kanji symbols to analyze.  This is repetative
rote memory drill, and it works! In his cover letter to me that accompanied my
review disk Don says, "You say you don't know how to read Japanese.  Play with
this program for a while and you'll learn a lot of it." He's right.  After 1/2
hour I was correctly guessing the majority of the Kanji symbols presented to me
on the first try.  After an hour, my correct percentage approached 90%.

    There is no easy way to learn to read a second language.  It takes lots of
time and  repetative drill, the kind of drill you get from Kanji Drill.
I know of no similar Japanese language software for other computers.  This is
because Kanji symbols cannot be entered from computer keyboards.  They each
have to be drawn pixel by pixel.  Don has taken the time to do this for us, so
only on the TI can you display (with Kanji drill) and print (with Don's
Japanese writing system) these numerous Kanji symbols.  If you want a computer
to help teach you Japanese, the 99/4A and Don's software may be the only way to
go.  Kanji Drill is fairware with a suggested donation of $20.  You can get the
latest version directly from the author by sending your money to P. O. Box 501,
Great Bend Kansas 67530-0501.  If you just want to try it out, send me $1 and I
will send you a version of Kanji drill which has 360 of the 881 kanji symbols.

     Don has many foreign language vocabulary drill packages with musical and
graphic rewards for correct answers.  Offerings include Vietnamese, Bulgarian,
Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew,
Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Latin (with roman numerals),
Norewgian, Polish, Portugese, Rumanian, Russian, Serbian (Cyrillic),
Serbo-Croatian (with latin alphabet), Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish.
What a list! These all come with several starter vocabulary files and have room
to add your own words.  These are all fairware with a suggested donation of at
least $10 per package.  Write Don for details, or go ahead and send him $10 AND
a disk with paid return mailer for each of these languages that interests you.
--------------------------
P-GRAM UTILITIES v2 by Tony Knerr

     When you purchase a P-Gram card from Bud Mills you get a disk labeled
"P-Gram Utility" which contans some modules you might want to put on your
P-Gram.  This is v1.  Tony Kneer has created a "P-Gram Utility v2" with more
software to load into the card.  In most cases you just load this stuff into
any P-Gram page without modification or patching, and it is there waiting for
you at the first menu that follows the color bar title screen.  All the
utilities v2 modules allow exit back to the title screen with FCTN/9.  Such
clean exits often don't occur with many custom gram modules created with Gram
Packer.  Here are the modules you get.
     --The TI Writer module with editor and formatter files all stored together
as one gram module.  You don't need a disk to boot the editor and formatter.
You can load TI writer from either basic with CALL TIW, and you don't have to
modify either basic to do this.
     --The Editor/Assembler module with its editor and assembler all in one
gram module.  You don't need a disk to boot the EA editor or assembler, and you
can call the EA module from either basic with CALL EA.
     --DSKU.  (This is my favorite).  It is not normally possible to pack John
Birdwell's DSKU into a gram module using Gram Packer.  Many, including myself,
have tried and failed.  Now DSKU is available as a gram file and everything
works properly.
     --XBPATCH.  This is a patch to your existing extended basic which adds
some CALLs such as HONK, BEEP, QUIT, LRGCPS (loads the large capital char set
used in the color bar title screen into XB) and CHARA1 (loads the TIW char set
into extended basic).  If you already have a modified (patched) extended basic,
this new set of patches may lock up your computer.  Keep a disk copy of your
old extended basic before you try out XBPATCH.

     Some nice cosmetic changes come with Utilities v2.  The anemic white on
light blue colors of the P-Gram dsr menus are changed to a much more readable
white on dark blue.  Also the GMENU menu can be centered on screen.
Previously, if you had many fewer than 24 GMENU items, these started at the
screen top and left lots of blank space at the screen bottom.

     And finally, if you have a CorComp ramdisk (one of the least useful pieces
of hardware made by CorComp) you can now load the P-Gram dsr with the ramdisk
in the P-Box.  Previously this was not possible.

     From the list above I am now using with my P-Gram+ the complete EA module
package, DSKU, and the easier to read dsr menus.  Probably all P-Gram owners
will find something useful in utilities v2.  It is public domain.  I'll send it
to you for $1, or you can send a little donation along with a disk and paid
return mailer directly to the author Tony Knerr, 17 Marshall Circle, Downington
PA 19335.

     I am easy to contact.  My mail address is P.O. Box 647, my internet email
address is [e-mail] and you can phone me evenings voice
at 419-667-3131.