home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
ftp.whtech.com
/
ftp.whtech.com.tar
/
ftp.whtech.com
/
articles
/
reviews
/
O7MIC93.TXT
< prev
next >
Wrap
Text File
|
2006-10-19
|
9KB
|
139 lines
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN MICROPENDIUM
P.O. Box 1343 Round Rock TX 78680
Phone 512-255-1512
Internet jkoloen@io.com
MICRO REVIEWS for July 1993 by Charles Good
On rather short notice I have been asked by Micropenium to take over
the Micro Reviews column and have agreed to give it a try, so let me
introduce myself. Many of you already know of me from the articles I have
written for the Lima newsletter and my efforts in organizing the Lima TI
Conferences. I am 47 and have 3 children still living at home (who will
help me with game and education software reviews). I teach botany and
biology at Ohio State University and am an expert on certain types of
fossil plants. Does any of this qualify me as a 99/4A computer expert?
Certainly not! Like most of Micropendium's readers I am a mere mortal
99/4A USER, not a programmer or hardware developer. Like many of the rest
of you I purchased my first /4A in 1983 and learned about computers by
studying the books that came with the console and typing in program
listings published in 99er Magazine. I now use my 99/4A for almost all my
home and professional computing jobs including manuscript preparation,
letter writing, creating exams for my students from a multiple choice
question data base, personal finance, mail lists, and games. I have not
written any fairware or commercial software and have no affiliation (other
than "customer") with any of the companies or dealers that serve the TI
community. I am thus an appropriately neutral reviewer.
Please loan me your 99/4A software, books, video tapes, and hardware
directly to me for review. I am not interested in acquiring a free
collection of commercial products so it will be my policy to return
commercial products after reviewing them. If I keep anything I will pay
for it. My system includes an 80 column device. Please note that I do not
own a Geneve and cannot evaluate Geneve specific products. Send your
products for review to me at P.O. Box 647, Venedocia Ohio 45894. My
evening phone is 419-667-3131
----------
THE FUNNELWEB V5 40 COLUMN EDITOR
The Funnelweb system is frequently updated as new features are added
and problems are fixed. Unlike commercial software where users have to pay
in advance for updates, Funnelweb users can try out the sharware updates
for free. What I am describing is the second release of the v5 40 column
editor released in mid June 1993. This supersedes the initial partial
release of the v5 40 column editor at the May Lima MUG Conference. There
is also a June update of the 80 column v5 editor. These v5 40 and 80
column editors are designed to run from the Funnelweb v4.4 environment.
Put the v5 ED and EE files and any desired character set files on your
Funnelweb v4.4 system disk. The 80 column v5 editor has already been
reviewed in Micro Reviews, with the reviewer stating that it is the only TI
word processor he considered superior to MY-WORD on a Geneve. Now 40
column users have access to the same neat new features.
The Funnelweb v5 editors have 3 features that are, to the best of my
knowledge, not found in any other TI word processor (RAG Writer, TI Writer,
First Draft, Writerease, Harrison).
1- Complete multlingual capability. By holding down the space bar as
the editor is loading into the computer's memory you are given your choice
of the following languages; English, French, German, Dutch, Swedish, and
Spanish. Selecting a language gives a command line written in the selected
language with appropriate commands. Print File in French is "Imprimer
Fiches", and the equivalent French is "IF". An appropriate foreign
character set is loaded which allows you to display on screen and print
(using your printer's foreign language character sets) accented vouls and
other symbols specific to the specified language. There are several
alternate ways of displaying and printing these foreign characters.
2- ALL CHARS graphics. If you look in your printer manual you will
discover a wide variety of graphic shapes coded with ASCII numbers >127.
These include foreign language characters, mathematical symbols, and line
graphics. The lines are useful for drawing pictures, designing business
forms, and creating borders. They resemble the "lines" created by the
commercial software Page Pro or Form Shop. Normally these >127 graphics
built into almost all printers are not accrssable directly from a 99/4A or
Geneve keyboard, but with the v5 editor they are. CTRL/comma lets you
switch back and forth between the normal ASCII <127 letters and ASCII >127
graphics. Everything is properly displayed on screen (WYSIWYG) and can be
printed properly directly from the editor with PF (Print File). You don't
need the formatter to print these graphics! As the car commercial says,
"Now this changes everything." A whole new world of TI graphics has been
opened up.
3-Both the June 40 and 80 column v5 editors have enhanced hard drive
support. From a ShowDirectory display, if you move the cursor next to the
name of a sub directory you can display the file names of that sub
directory. Also, you can bring up a display of the root directory of the
currently displayed directory from within ShowDirectory. This ability to
display the entire hard drive tree structure is, I believe, not found in
any other disk manager available to the TI community. (I don't have a TI
hard drive, so I can't try this feature out for myself. The description
above is based on the v5 editor's documentation.)
Among the other nice features not found in previous versions of the
Funnelweb editors are help screens dsplayed from the command line, wild
card capability with Find/Replace String, the ability to scroll while in
the command line, and the ability to goto a particular line number by
typing that number and <enter> in command mode. I give the Funnelweb v5
editors my very highest recommendation.
To obtain either or both of the v5 editors put $1 ($2 for both) in an
envelope carefully wraped in a piece of paper with your return address
written on it and send it to me at the address above. If you decide to use
this software, you owe the authors a fairware donation over and above what
you have already paid for other parts of the Funnelweb system.
----------
COLLECTING CARTRIDGES; a book length manuscript by Bill Gaskill.
If you are interested in computer history and perhaps enjoyed reading
THE ORPHAN CHRONICLES a few years ago then you will like this. Bill has
one of the largest personal collections of TI cartridge software. What
began as a newsletter article has now been expanded to over 100 printed
pages, with additional material planned for future revisions. This
scholarly work is based on Bill's personal cartridge collection plus a
thorough study of computer magazines (Info World, Byte, Compute, 99er,
Enthusiast 99, etc), third party and TI catalogs, and internal TI
documents.
Bill has found references to over 360 99/4A cartridges, of which he has
actually seen 275 in cartridge format. The rest are known only from gram
disk files or are products announced but never released. List price or all
the 99/4A cartridges that were released exceeds $11000! For each cartridge
Bill includes information, where known, on software author, manufacturer's
product number, list price, release date, along with a physical description
of the cartridge and its original packaging and documentation.
The table of contents includes: Cartridge History, Collecting
Guidelines, Cartridge Listings and Descriptions, Cartridge Names Sorted by
Manufacturer, Cartridge Program References (from published literature),
Cartridge Trivia, Command Module Simulator, Cartridge Newsbytes, Milton
Bradley MBX System, Romox ECPCs and Software Centers, and The Other
Cartridge Using Computers. Under this last heading Bill will in future
revisions include descriptions of cartridges for other 1980's computers and
game machines by Atari, Coleco, Commodore, Gemini, and Mattel.
I recommend this manuscript to anyone wanting a single reference
describing the cartridge software available for the 99/4A (much of which is
still available from dealers) and anyone interested in computer history.
COLLECTING CARTRIDGES is packed with neat historical trivia. A check for
$15 sent to Bill Gaskill at 2310 Cypress Court, Grand Junction Colorado 81506
will get you a printed copy of the latest revision.