Archive Magazine CD 1995/Archive Magazine CD 1995.iso/text/hints/volume_07/issue_06

Text File | 1995-02-16 | 19.5 KB | 396 lines

•  A4 battery life − Many A4 users may have noticed that the charge of
the A4 battery becomes shorter after each recharge. Apparently, if the
battery is not discharged completely it does not run for the full
capacity upon recharge. One solution is to unplug the battery manager
from the command line and leave the computer on until the red light
stops blinking. The battery will then be fully discharged and can then
be recharged as normal.
7.6
I now leave the battery manager unplugged permanently. I just have to
make sure I save everything regularly. When the red light flashes to
indicate the battery being flat, I have a couple of minutes to save the
latest alterations and shutdown.  Awie Bosman, South Africa.
7.6
•  Beware the old module! − I have discovered that some older (slightly
badly-behaved) applications load their own modules in their Run file.
Presumably this is because RISC OS 2 didn’t have all the modules in ROM
and an application needing a module newer than the RISC OS 2 one would
need to load it itself − if it was too lazy to use SysMerge, that is. If
you have RISC OS 3, these applications can have the disconcerting effect
of replacing a RISC OS 3 ROM module with an older version of the same
module.
7.6
I came across this when trying to run Almanac − I got the error message
“Module .....$.!System.FPEmulator not found”. Looking into System
confirmed that there was no such module under this pathname, and several
minutes of panic ensued while I played ‘hunt the module’. Finally, a
hard reset seemed to restore Almanac to perfect behaviour, the module
was restored and I was so relieved that I forgot about the problem for
some weeks.
7.6
The problem recurred but this time, Ovation would not run either, giving
a similar message. I realised that, in RISC OS 3, FPEmulator is in ROM,
so something must have happened to the ROM module. On checking *Help
ROMModules, I found FPEmulator was “Dormant”. Trying to *RMReinit it had
no effect. Then I remembered that I had been playing CIS’s Mah Jong.
Sure enough, in the application directory was a copy of FPEmulator and
in the Run file was the line “RMLoad <obey$dir> FPEmulator”. Inspecting
this module showed it to be version 2.60 (the ROM module is 2.87).
7.6
In the Almanac Run file is the line “RMEnsure FPEmulator 2.70 Error You
need FPEmulator 2.70 or later”. So, Mah Jong had been quietly loading an
old module without this being at all obvious until another application
wanted the ROM version. Deleting the line from Mah Jong’s Run file cured
the bug but Mah Jong seems to get along only intermittently with the new
FPEmulator, unpredictably throwing up “invalid floating point operation”
errors. (Should it do this? What about “backwards compatibility”?)
Putting “RMKill FPEmulator” followed by “RMReinit FPEmulator” at the end
of Mah Jong’s Run file doesn’t have any effect, but running the same two
lines in a separate Obey file does work. Does anyone know why?
7.6
The moral would seem to be to inspect the directories of applications
you have been using if your modules start misbehaving. They may be
loading all sorts of things you don’t want.  Peter Young, Cheltenham.
7.6
•  Computer hang-ups − There’s a hint in Computer Concepts’ Turbo Drivers
manual which suggests that if the printer should ‘stall’, selecting
<f12> followed by <return> will re-start the printer.
7.6
Quite by chance, I found that doing the same thing can occasionally
clear a computer hang-up. Specifically, it may work when you can still
move the mouse pointer but clicking on an icon, etc has no effect.
7.6
The beauty of this is that, rather than having to perform a soft or hard
reset to clear the hang-up and thus losing any unsaved work, you are
returned to the desktop as it was before selecting <f12> <return>, i.e.
all windows and documents are restored.  Jim Nottingham, York.
7.6
•  !FontEd under RISC OS 3.1 − Ronald Alpiar’s problem of invisible
coordinates in last month’s Help!!! (7.5 p8), apparently only occurs in
256 colour modes. In 16 colours they reappear.
7.6
(I think this could be linked with an obscure problem which one of our
subscribers has reported to Risc Developments. When using Ovation in
certain 256-colour screen modes, inverted text, i.e. white on black,
becomes black on black! Risc Developments say they have a partial
solution and are working further on the problem. Ed.)
7.6
•  Keystroke hints − I’ve just started using Keystroke myself, in
earnest, and, quite frankly, it is brilliant! It will save me huge
amounts of time with all the text editing I do from day to day. For
example, contributors often say, “Press the menu button to do such and
such” instead of “Press <menu>... ”. I now click on “the” and press
<alt-f6> and the change is made at a stroke! It is done by making the
key insert the text |D<60>\S-⇨\\⇦\<62>|D. The <60> and <62> have to be
used to create the triangle brackets which, as a beginner to Keystroke,
confused me for a while.
7.6
I find Impression’s <shift-ctrl-Q> useful for inverting charactres (sic)
− a very common typing error! However, I sometimes need to change “to
boldly go” into “boldly to go” (yuk!) so I produced a key, <alt-Q>, to
invert adjacent words by using |D\S-⇨\|V − simple but effective − just
put the cursor somewhere in the first word and click <alt-Q>.
7.6
I often have to delete a comma when someone has put one in the, wrong
place. So <alt-\> generates the string \S-⇨\\⇦\|? which moves to the
beginning of the next word, back one space and then deletes one
character. This has the effect of deleting the final character of the
word in which you have just clicked, so it could also be used to change
a plural to a singular. The only time this falls down, of course, is
when the next word is separated by an extra character like a bracket or
somesuch.
7.6
These special keys may seem a little unnecessary but to someone who does
as much editing as I do every day, they can save quite a bit of time.
7.6
Finally, in the days of programmable function keys on the old BBC Micro,
I used to use |[ to generate an <escape>. This seems to work OK with
Keystroke and avoids having to use \ESCAPE\ in a text string. I remember
it because the [ is like an E for escape.  Ed.
7.6
(There are a huge number of time-saving tricks that could be done with
Keystroke, so do send in your own Keystroke hints & tips. Ed.)
7.6
•  Resultz and Continental numbers − I have just discovered a feature
offered by Resultz which should delight Continental spreadsheet users.
The sixth number format in the list offered by the style editor, which
looks so strange with its character combinations “,.” and “.,” actually
is used to replace the English way of writing numbers with the
Continental one, so that a number like 3,500.50 will appear instead as
3.500,50!  Jochen Konietzko, Köln.
7.6
•  RISC OS !NewLook − Now that everybody has had a chance to play with
the new look desktop as distributed at Acorn World 93 (and numerous
other sources), we would be interested to hear what you think of it. Do
you use it? If not why not? Does it do everything it should? How does it
compare to other user environments (e.g. Windows 3.1, NeXT)? What would
your ideal RISC OS 4 desktop look like? Please write to Archive with
your comments.
7.6
•  Schedule and Spell (Pocket Book) − There seems to be no mention at all
of Spell in any of the manuals, except for a section in the User Guide
on how to spell-check in Write. The Schedule release note says that
“this replaces the Spell application supplied with your Pocket Book”,
but does not tell you that you shouldn’t delete Spell before installing
Schedule. If you do this, as I did, you find, somewhat oddly, that you
can check spelling in Write but that you can’t save to the global
dictionary − you can’t, of course, use Spell as a free-standing
application because it isn’t on the Desktop. If you reinstall Spell,
from whichever drive you have Schedule in, all works as it should,
though you have to learn how to use Spell from the Help facility, which
is very good.
7.6
Nowhere seems to make it plain, however, that to use document
dictionaries, you have to enable this from the Setup/Install menu in
Spell. Incidentally, document dictionaries are not kept in the WRD
directory with “the same name and in the same directory as the document,
but with the file extension D$S”, as the manual says, but in a separate
D$S directory with the same name as the document.  Peter Young,
Cheltenham.
7.6
•  Style − Changing date and time formats − Impression Style allows the
current date or time to be inserted into a document. By default,
Impression Style enters ‘25th January 1994’ for the date and ‘6:52:13
am’ for the time. Both formats may be changed quite easily. You can have
several different date and time formats stored and swap from one to the
other while you work.
7.6
The date is inserted in one of three ways.
7.6
•  By pressing <ctrl-shift-D>
7.6
•  By clicking on the insert icon on the tool bar and clicking on Current
date
7.6
•  From the menu: Utilities−>Insert−>Current date
7.6
The time is inserted in one of two ways
7.6
•  By clicking on the insert icon on the tool bar and clicking on Current
time
7.6
•  From the menu: Utilities−>Insert−>Current time
7.6
The format used for the time and the date is stored in special system
variables called Style$TimeFormat and Style$DateFormat. These variables
are not mentioned in the printed manual and are given wrongly in the
early versions of the on-line help as Impression$TimeFormat and
Impression$DateFormat. If the user does not set these variables, the
!Run file sets them automatically.
7.6
To set the variables, find your RISC OS 3 User Guide and find the
section on System Variables. This gives a table explaining (not very
well!) how to set the time and date variables. There isn’t space here
for a tutorial but the Impression Style defaults are written
%z12:%mi:%se %pm for the time which appears as ‘7:27:07 am’ and for the
date, %zdy%st %mo %ce%yr which appears as ‘25th January 1994’.
7.6
You can reset the two system variables temporarily as follows: press
<f12> and type, for example, Set Style$TimeFormat %z24:%mi then press
<return> twice to return you to the desktop. Now insert the time in an
Impression Style document and you should get the current time in the
format ‘7:30’ instead of ‘7:30:01 am’.
7.6
The “time” doesn’t have to be confined to the time − you can add the
date to the time format just as you can add the time to the date format.
So you could use the “time” and the “date” as two different versions of
the date.
7.6
When writing letters I like <ctrl-shift-D> to give me ‘25th January
1994’ but when I am writing notes from the telephone, which I do a lot,
I like to date and time stamp them so I prefer ‘7:36 Tue 25 Jan 94’.
This means that you can have a keyboard shortcut for entering the time
combined with, or instead of, the date.
7.6
To do this, you just need two Obey files. Load !Edit from the Apps icon.
From the Edit menu, choose Misc−>Set Type and then delete the offered
Text and enter Obey and press <return>. Into the edit window type:
7.6
Set Style$DateFormat “%z24:%mi %W3 %zdy %m3 %yr ”
7.6
Press <return> and save the file to disc calling it DateTime. After you
have double-clicked on this file icon, you should see the current time
and date in the format ‘7:36 Tue 25 Jan 94’.
7.6
You now need another similar file to restore the default. Create another
Obey file in Edit and this time it should say simply:
7.6
Set Style$DateFormat “”
7.6
When Impression Style sees that the variable is set to null, it uses the
format in the !Run file. Save this file, preferably as something
meaningful like DateDeflt.
7.6
Now store the two files on your Pinboard so that you can double-click on
whichever format you want.
7.6
If you want to change the format automatically, as Style loads on start-
up, put a line in your !Boot file, after Style is loaded, to set the
system variables mentioned above. If you want to change the default
format permanently, you can amend the !Run file in Style though this is
not normally recommended and you should always keep a backup copy of the
original !Run file. If you don’t know where to find the !Run file, or
how to alter it, it’s probably best not to do it!  Paul Lewis, London
W3.
7.6
•  Style − Saving files as documents − Impression Style allows files to
be saved as documents rather than directories. The advantage is that a
document takes up far less space than a directory. If you store files
compressed, perhaps as a backup, a file can be compressed much more
efficiently than a directory.
7.6
There is no utility to go through your entire hard disc to convert all
those space-hungry directories into files, but you can convert them as
you use each directory quite simply. Load a number of the old-type
Impression documents − Style will warn you that the document is in an
old format and may warn you about things it can’t convert or find.
Remember that instead of clicking on OK to these warnings, you can just
press <return>.
7.6
You can load up to sixteen documents, memory permitting. Click in the
top document and press <ctrl-shift-Y>. That toggles the file save
routine to save the document as a file rather than as a directory. Press
<f3> then <return> to save it. Although its name still begins with a
‘!’, it is now a file and not a directory and will have the Style icon
instead of the old ‘I’ icon.
7.6
Now press <ctrl-f2> to remove the document from memory and then go
through the stack of documents in the same way. It’s not automatic but
it is quite quick. How much you save will depend on your disc filing
system but I saved about 14Kb per document. Documents can be stored as
files but long documents might be best left in the old format,
especially ones that are so long that you have to load and edit chapters
separately to fit them in memory.
7.6
If you have a backup of your hard disc (and if you don’t, start one
now!) you may find that RISC OS will not overwrite a directory with a
document of the same name. The answer is to alter a system variable
called Copy$Options. To do that, press <f12> and enter Set Copy$Options
F then press <return> twice. That should force RISC OS to overwrite the
directory with a file when you backup. There is more on these options
for copying in the User Manual under *Copy.  Paul Lewis, London W3.
7.6
•  Tables (again) − I often have to make up tables and have always been
frustrated by the fact that wordprocessors work essentially in lines
while data for tables usually comes in the form of columns. It would be
great to be able to pour the data into the WP side by side.
7.6
The only way around it that I have found within Impression is to
generate sufficient side by side columns. If you want a master page to
do this, make one with the requisite number of columns and then unlink
them by cutting and pasting them back with the same co-ordinates and
dimensions.
7.6
An easier way, particularly for numerical tables but also for text, is
to assemble the tables in a spreadsheet which will accept column data
and then transfer the finished arrangement back to the WP in the form of
a CSV file of the block of data.
7.6
I use Schema which is particularly amenable in that CSV files of data
can be input just by dragging them onto a marker and columns (data
separated by returns) will load as columns. It is not necessary to do
any more than ensure that the sheet is large enough to take the longest
line/column. If the basic CSV input filter is set on Impression, all the
commas will be converted to tabs and you get an instant table by
applying a suitable table style. The input filter, CSV+, in the Business
Supplement will automatically generate tables for the non-table literate
− in a somewhat complicated way!  Bob de Vekey, Watford.
7.6
•  Time errors (continued) − Further to Matthew Hunter’s item on time
errors (7.4 p51), the situation is actually significantly more complex
than described. The CLib time commands will not give the correct answer
if the cumulative effect of TimeZone and DST (e.g. BST) is negative.
Setting TimeZone to zero is not going to be a valid solution if you
don’t live in the UK.
7.6
I encountered this problem some time ago during the development of
ArcTrack. The problem is particularly acute in this case since the
program needs to know both UTC (for the orbital mathematics) and Local
Time (to display to the user). I will attempt below to describe the
solution which I developed. It may not be the simplest general solution
but it solved my particular problem.
7.6
This first code fragment determines the difference between local time
and UTC in seconds. It will be necessary to make a new copy of swi.h for
RISC OS 3 if this has not already been done. The SWI_List program
provided with the compiler will achieve this.
7.6
#include “os.h”
7.6
#include “swi.h”
7.6
int utc_offset ()
7.6
{temp ;
7.6
  os_swi2r (Territory_ReadCurrentTimeZone, 0, 0, (int*) NULL, &temp);
7.6
  return temp / 100; /* Output of SWI is in centiseconds */
7.6
}
7.6
The secret of extracting the correct current value of UTC time is to use
os_word 14, thus:
7.6
#include “os.h”
7.6
double utc_time () /* Would be significantly simpler if long ints were
64 bits */
7.6
{{ unsigned int a, b; }
7.6
  double un_int = 4294967295.0;
7.6
  struct five_byte now = {3 , 0};
7.6
  os_word (14, (void*) &now);  /* Determine current UTC time */
7.6
  return((double) temp.a + (double) temp.b * un_int) /100.0;
7.6
}
7.6
The value returned is the number of seconds since 1st January 1900. Of
course, this is not the same as the time_t values returned by the CLib
‘time’ function. To convert to time_t values, you could assume
(correctly) that they are unsigned integers representing the number of
seconds since 1st January 1970. Just remember that, under ANSI C, this
simple representation is not guaranteed and Acorn are perfectly entitled
to change it in future compiler releases.  R C Simpson,  Farnborough.
7.6
•  Writing extensions to PC Discs − Some people have had difficulty
writing to PC discs and giving a file an appropriate extension that a PC
will be able to read − the infamous README.TXT file, for example.
RISC OS 3 gives desktop access to DOS discs but it makes the discs
appear as a standard RISC OS disc. The only way to tell that it is
different is to check the size using free or current format from the
floppy disc iconbar menu.
7.6
The problem arises due to the different way in which RISC OS and DOS use
directory specifiers. DOS uses the ‘/’ character to specify a
subdirectory whereas RISC OS uses the full stop. The DOS path “SOME/DIR/
STRUCT” would be “SOME.DIR.STRUCT” within RISC OS . Therefore, if you
try to write the file README.TXT to a RISC OS disc, what you are
actually trying to do is save the file TXT into a directory called
README − which probably does not exist.
7.6
To write a file with an extension, use the ‘/’ character, e.g. README/
TXT. This can be a little confusing because, if you write the file to an
Acorn formatted disc, the ‘/’ character will be part of the filename but
if you write to a DOS disc, the file will be saved as ‘README’ with an
extension of TXT. The screenshot below shows the RISC OS directory
display and the PC Emulator directory showing that the file does appear
with an extension.
7.6
Many save boxes will only allow you to use names of up to 10 characters
− this therefore limits you to a six character filename (with a four
character extension “/XXX”). However, the DOS filer within RISC OS will
allow you to rename a file to eight characters, giving a total of
twelve.
7.6
It should also be noted that if you copy a file from a DOS disc to a
RISC OS disc and back again, the extension may change. This is again due
to the name length restrictions. README2.TXT would be copied as README2/
TX for RISC OS . When copied back to DOS, the file would therefore be
README2.TX.  Matthew Hunter, NCS.  A
7.6