Archive Magazine CD 1995

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Text Truncated. Only the first 1MB is shown below. Download the file for the complete contents. Late again! 4.5 Sorry that this issue is even later than the January one. One reason is that Ali fell on the ice and broke her wrist (Ouch! Get well soon, Ali!) but the other reason is... 4.5 First Impression 4.5 At last, I’ve made the move and gone over to preparing the magazine on Impression II on the Archimedes. All I can say is that I wish I had made the move earlier. It is a bit slower at the moment because I’m having to learn as I go but I can see that it’s going to be much quicker and easier in the long run. 4.5 My first impressions (sic) of Impression II are: (a) speed − this is mainly due to the screen update which is much, much faster but also, the spelling checker is noticeably faster than on the Mac and (b) what I can only call “immediacy”. Part of this is that people send in their material on disc, it goes straight into the machine and straight into the magazine (no more spooling across from a BBC Master to the Mac!!). The other aspect of this immediacy is the direct in-memory transfer of RISC-OS − you edit something in !Edit or !Draw or !Paint and, even without saving it, drop it into an Impression frame and see the effect. If it’s not quite right, you edit it again and drop it in again − very powerful and very impressive compared with the Mac. 4.5 Over to you! 4.5 This changeover to Impression means that you can help to speed up the preparation of the magazine by the way you send in your contributions. If you use Impression, we can give you a template to use so that, as you write your articles, comments, hints or whatever, you can add the familiar Archive styles as you go along. 4.5 I have explained this in a bit more detail on page 52ff but, basically, if you send in anything for publication, please send it in on disc. When we send the disc back (assuming it has a name and address on it!), we will send you a copy of the monthly program disc. 4.5 Thanks again for all your help, 4.5 4.5 Products Available 4.5 • Archway2 is here at last. Simtron’s Wimp programming software has now appeared in its mark II format. It has so many features that you’ll have to ask Simtron to send you a descriptive leaflet. The price is £99.95 + £5 postage from Simtron or £90 through Archive. 4.5 • ArcMonitor − ArcMonitor, Cambridge International’s machine code monitor program has gone up in price from £24.95 to £29.95 (£28 through Archive). 4.5 • ArcPinball − Shibumi Software have produced a pinball machine on your screen for just £24.95 or £23 through Archive. It claims to be the closest computer simulation to the real thing. It has various backdrops and music tracks. One nice feature is the video snatches which appear at appropriate points during the action. 4.5 • ArcTerm7 from The Serial Port is a full-featured comms package for just £79.95 (£75 through Archive) from “the comms guru” Hugo Fiennes. It offers TTY, ANSI, VT52, VT102 and Viewdata terminals with X, X-1k, Y, Y- g, Z and J modem protocols as well as Kermit, SEAlink, MNP2 and Vasscom. Other features include 100-number phone directory, call logging, script language and macro keys. 4.5 • Bengali and Punjabi outline fonts − Hampshire Microtechnology Centre have produced outline fonts for Punjabi and Bengali characters. These can be used with Impression, Poster, PenDown, Draw etc. Each language font is on a separate disc for £20 per disc plus £1 post & packing. Also on each disc is a file containing a printout of the font plus a keyboard overlay in Draw and Poster format. 4.5 • Blowpipe from The Serial Port is a “totally awesome horizontal shoot ’em up game” with 5 levels of “meteoric mega-action” and 2.5M of 256- colour graphics with 15 pieces of 4-channel stereo music all compressed onto two 3.5“ discs for just £19.95 (£19 through Archive). 4.5 • Capsoft Disc Nº1 − This disc contains various drawn fonts, borders, frames etc for use in DTP and !Draw. Useful for creating dropped capitals, posters etc. Send £6 cheque to B.J. Thompson, 8 Oldgate Avenue, Weston-on-Trent, Derbyshire, DE7 2BZ. 4.5 • Careware Nº 12 − The latest in our series of charity discs is Careware Nº 12 which contains HU-Prolog. A review of this appears on page 40. (We have raised over £35,000 for charity through Archive magazine during the last couple of years. Well done all who have contributed!) 4.5 • CJE ARM3 − There has been a bit of a problem with the software that was shipped with the early CJE ARM3’s. Basically, it bore a remarkable similarity to the software written by Nick van Someren for the Aleph One ARM3. About the only thing that had been changed was the copyright string! However, CJE and Aleph One have settled out of court and Nick is donating a proportion of the compensation money to charity. CJE are re- writing their control software and so, if you have a CJE ARM3 and the modules on the disc are dated September/October 1990, contact CJE for details of how to get your free, legal version of the software. 4.5 • Decibel Attenuator Circuit − By any other name, this is a fan slower- downer. If you are fed up with the noise of the fan on a 310, 410, 420 or 440 Ray Maidstone has come to your rescue. He has produced an electronic speed control board (user-fittable) for just £18 +VAT (£20 through Archive). He has done careful temperature measurements to check whether effective cooling takes place at lower fan speeds and the evidence shows that you don’t have to suffer Concord-type noises any longer! 4.5 • Desktop Folio from E.S.M. should be ready by the time you get this magazine. For £90 +VAT (£95 through Archive) you get the long-awaited, much-trialled, school-oriented “word-processor, desktop and interactive publisher”. 4.5 • Dongle Dangle − We are now stocking dongle dangles for Computer Concepts’ Impression dongles at £5. If your computer goes back against a wall, you probably find that the extra distance the dongle plus printer lead sticks out is a nuisance. The dongle dangle is a short flexible extension cable which will allow the dongle and printer lead to... yes, dangle... down behind the computer. It should also work for the WorraCAD dongle. 4.5 • DTP Seeds is a book of ideas for DTP − £8.45 from 4mation or £8 through Archive. This book has 100 pages of sample DTP output to show what can be done using the DTP facilities available on the Archimedes. It is not specific to one DTP package but gives general ideas about the sort of impressive output you can produce with good DTP techniques. 4.5 • Educational materials − G.A.Herdmann Educational offer a free catalogue of materials for DTP, electronics, educational games, advanced chemistry, data-logging, assessment and CAL. Just send them an S.A.E. 4.5 • Equasor − For those who need to put scientific equations in their Impression text, Computer Concepts’ Equasor is what you need − £56.35 or £52 through Archive. 4.5 • Expression-PS − For those preparing Impression output for printing on PostScript devices including professional typesetters, Computer Concepts have produced a utility program (£23 from CC or £21 through Archive). This provides such facilities as control over screen density and screen angle, provides a selection of different screen designs, allows output on a variety of new page sizes, provides negative output and automatic font name conversion from Acorn to PostScript names. 4.5 • File Handling for All is the title of a new book from David Spencer and Mike Williams of Beebug Ltd. It aims to offer an extensive and comprehensive introduction to the writing of file handling programs with particular reference to BASIC. It applies to the BBC Micro as well as the Archimedes. The cost is £9.95 plus postage from Beebug. There is also a supporting disc for £4.75. 4.5 • Giant Killer from Topologika is a maths adventure game. It includes calculator games, number patterns, tessellations, map work, topology, time/space and logical puzzles. It is a well-established product that has only just come to our notice and sells for £19.95 or £18 through Archive. Also available is the Giant Killer Support disc at £17.50 (£16 through Archive) which is a disc of Giant Killer puzzles in graphical form. 4.5 • Investigator II − The Serial Port have an improved disc utility program providing sector level disc utilities allowing the accessing of discs where other methods fail. £27.95 from The Serial Port or £26 through Archive. 4.5 • Iron Lord − Another game ported across from the Amiga by Cygnus Software. It is a medieval adventure which also has arcade action and wargaming. The price is £19.95 from Cygnus or £18 through Archive. 4.5 • Landmarks − Longman Logotron have released the first two titles in this series which is aimed to complement the Landmarks Schools’ TV series. Landmarks Egypt and Landmarks Second World War provide text and graphics data which pupils can interrogate. The packs are £19 +VAT each. (£20 each through Archive.) 4.5 • Mad Professor Mariarti − This is a maze-type game from Krisalis Software where you have to travel around through five laboratories avoiding being killed by nasties, and solving puzzles in order to complete all 100 screens. Sounds familiar? Maybe, but our two boys (aged 10 and 12) have been hooked on it for days. £19.95 or £18 through Archive. 4.5 • Magpie is a multi-purpose program aimed at primary and middle schools for doing project work. It can be used to combine pictures, text and sound samples and can even be used as a simple DTP medium using Acorn outline fonts. Magpie is £54 +VAT from Longman-Logotron or £57 through Archive. 4.5 • Mental Maths is Cambridge International’s new mental arithmetic pack for £19.95 (or £18 through Archive) It is designed to work in with the National Curriculum attainment targets but “makes learning and practis ing mental arithmetic fun”. 4.5 • MicroNet removable hard drives − The speed increases and the price falls! The average access time of the MR45 drives is not 25 milliseconds as previously stated but 20 milliseconds. Not astounding news, true, but the really good news is that we are now buying in big enough quantities to go direct to the importer and can therefore get an even better price. We have now brought down the price of the basic drive from £650 to £595 including VAT & carriage and, with an Oak podule, to £795. With the Lingenuity podule, it is £775. 4.5 • OCR from Irlam is still “not quite ready” − about three weeks. The cost will be £159 +VAT or £165 through Archive. 4.5 • P.I.P.P. − Cambridge International Software’s Professional Integrated Project Planner is now available in four versions for primary, middle and secondary schools and for teachers’ and resources centres. The cost of each package is £49.95 or £46 through Archive. 4.5 • PowerBand version II − 4mation are offering a free upgrade to Mark II − just return your two discs to them (not us). This new version clears up one or two minor bugs (as they say!), has lots of improvements to all aspects of the original game, allows the skill level of opponents’ cars to be individually set, allows the number of opponents in Fun and Game modes to be set between 2 and 11 and allows you to adjust your own skill level. 4.5 • Revelation is an education-based art package from Longman Logotron (£76 +VAT or £80 through Archive.). It has been created with particular emphasis on facilities for taking images from other sources such as digitisers, scanners or video frame-grabbers and processing them to create totally new pictures. 4.5 • Show Page − For anyone interested in learning about PostScript and for those wanting to handle PostScript files from other computers, Computer Concepts have produced a PostScript compatible interpreter which runs in the RISC-OS environment (minimum memory 2M). The price is £149 +VAT or £155 through Archive. 4.5 • Square Route − At last a slightly different game − well, I’ve never seen it before. It has 250 levels and all you have to do in each level is “turn the right number of white squares into red”. Simple? Not exactly, you have to use your brains. When you have completed all 250 levels(!) you get a special number which will allow you to send off for a further 250 levels for just £6.99. The game is not copy protected (making hard disc operation easy) but has an embedded serial number to enable its producers, Computereyes, to prosecute those who breach copyright. The price is £19.95 from Computereyes or £18 through Archive. 4.5 • Tracker is a music sequencing package for producing your own sound- tracker module for use in your own programs. £49.95 from The Serial Port or £46 through Archive. 4.5 • VIDC enhancer & Taxan 795 − People using Taxan 795 monitors may like to know that Atomwide have produced a new module for use with their VIDC enhancer. This is a free upgrade if you send them a disc plus some stamps. 4.5 • Worldscape from The Serial Port is an emulation game in which you try to control the ecological balance of the world. You build cities, power stations, search for coal and oil, plant forests etc and see what the effect is on the ozone layer, temperature, pollution, sea levels etc. The price is £19.95 or £19 through Archive. 4.5 • X_Image is an image format conversion utility for PC compatibles (!!) which will convert from Acorn sprite format to TIFF and other PC image formats. Needs files on a PC format disc (using, say, !PCDir from Careware Nº7) and only costs £10 from Foster Findlay Associates. 4.5 Review software received... 4.5 We have received review copies of the following software & hardware: Capsoft disc Nº1, Decibel Attenuator, File Handling For All, DTP Seeds, Maddingly Hall, PipeLine October 1990 and January 1991 discs, Carewares 4, 5, 6, 10, PRES’s A3000 disc interface and DFS reading software and Minerva’s (new) Business Accounts packages. A 4.5 Help!!!! 4.5 • Disc format for Sun Sparcstation IPC − I want to convert from this to A3000, so does anyone know anything about the disc format I need? I could go via MS-DOS, I suppose. Darren Sillett, Aldershot (0252−345641). 4.5 • File recovery − In DOS there are products such as PC Tools which allow the recovery of deleted files from hard and floppy discs. To my knowledge there is no such thing for the Archimedes. Obviously this will be difficult for E format, but any offers? 4.5 • Hardware projects − If anyone is interested in hardware projects on the Archimedes, I have some expertise in hardware and some contacts who can do some software. All we need is ideas! Does anyone have any suggestions of the sorts of things they would like to see hung on the end of an Archimedes? Or are you interested in getting involved in such a project yourself? If you have any such interest, contact me via the Archive office. Alan Bryant, Kent. 4.5 • HP Deskjet Plus RISC-OS printer driver − If you ask anyone for a printer driver for the HP Deskjet Plus, they say you should use the Laserjet driver. However, this does not support all the facilities of the Deskjet. Has anyone improved on this driver? Chris Bollard, Plymouth. 4.5 • Maths Shareware − The Maths disc, Shareware 25, seems to have been well received. However, more programs are being sent in. Is there demand for a second such disc? What sort of software would people like to see included? Brian Cowan. 4.5 • Microsoft Word or Write − Has anyone got any details of the format used by Microsoft Word or Write on a PC so I can convert from Archimedes format? BJ Edwards, Beaconsfield. 4.5 • MS-DOS queries − Is there anyone who considers themselves an ‘expert’ on using MS-DOS on the Archimedes who would have the time to answer queries sent in by letter to the Archive office? It would probably only be about one a week on average. 4.5 • PC program to read DFS − Does anyone know of a program on a PC which will read DFS discs? BJ Edwards, Beaconsfield. 4.5 • Quattro data files with Schema – Does anyone know how to translate Quattro data files into Lotus 123 format so that they can be copied into Schema? I have AsEasyAs, Twin and Symphony (which does produce Lotus format files) but have so far failed to load any Quattro files. Contact Michael Green, Fire Beacon Cottage, East Hill, Sidmouth, Devon, EX10 0ND. 4.5 Help offered 4.5 • Digitisation − If anyone wants artwork or VHS tape images digitised, let Ned Abell know on 02922−249. Prices would be by arrangement depending on what you wanted. A 4.5 4.5 Hints and Tips 4.5 • ANSI C v3 on a SCSI Hard Disc – After some trial an error, I finally managed to install ANSI C v3 correctly on my new Oak SCSI card with 45Mb hard disc drive. Here’s what I had to do: 4.5 First change line 3390 in the ‘InstallNet’ program which is on all three of the ANSI C discs so that it reads: 4.5 3390 DATA “ADFS::0.$”,“NET:$”,“SCSI::SCSIDisc4.$” 4.5 Then run the “InstallHD” program from each disc and always answer ‘Y’ on the overwrite options (otherwise, the back up program would stop). 4.5 If you use the included !Cstart obey file, you should not ‘*Set Run$Path’ in your !boot file and you should remember to modify the !Cstart file to work with SCSI and not ADFS i.e. c$loc SCSI::4.$ 4.5 Atle Baardholt, Norway 4.5 • Deskjet Plus ink cartridges, recharging − Further to Bill Graham’s note in Archive 4.2 p8, I’ve found that Quinx Permanent Black works well and is probably cheaper than Art Pen Ink. You do need to be careful that you don’t inject more ink than the sponge will absorb, otherwise the mess is dreadful! Stuart Bell, Brighton. 4.5 • DropShip passwords − Passwords for DropShip are Dahlia, Gaggle, Kaunda and Nautch. 4.5 • ExAllPlus − This is a non-Wimp program which was written in an attempt to catalogue my discs. It was designed for use with a single ADFS Floppy drive and a SCSI Hard disc together with a Star LC10 printer using continuous paper. Other printers may require some alteration to the coding. 4.5 Most existing “ExAll” and “CatAll” programs invoke the *EX and *CAT calls (!) which produce a lot of unnecessary and confusing duplication of libraries, directories etc. (I have memories of the reams of paper produced by an “ExAll” print-out of the original Archimedes Welcome disc.) To avoid this, these calls have been re-written so that, in addition to other changes, the directory headings have been reduced to path descriptions. 4.5 The program will produce both screen and printed listings of either the full disc or the root directory. The various options are selected by a series of key-strokes and a default screen “ExAll” routine has been set- up which can be easily customised. 4.5 Use can be made of the condensed print option to produce catalogue listings eight entries wide as against the usual five. This rather spoils the screen display in this mode but it was thought useful to maintain a check on the output to the printer. When using this option to produce “EX” listings the screen display is OK and the reverse feed facility of the Star LC10 enables double column print-outs to be obtained. 4.5 The “GetType” program is loaded in by the main “ExAllPlus” code and contains all the FileType codes I have been able to find but it can easily be updated. 4.5 (The listing is far too long to put in the magazine. I have put it on the monthly program disc. Ed.) 4.5 Doug Tuddenham 4.5 • First Word Plus embedded commands − If you switch off the Word Processor mode of FWP you can enter printer commands directly into the text. Double bracket command codes e.g. ((n))n1 can be entered to change the printer font and style. For example, with a Star LC24-200 in the following effects can be achieved: 4.5 Font ((F))0 Times Roman 4.5 ((F))1 Sans Serif 4.5 ((F))2 Courier 4.5 ((F))3 Prestige 4.5 ((F))4 Script 4.5 ((F))5 Draft 4.5 Size ((S))0 Standard 4.5 ((S))1 Double Width 4.5 ((S))2 Double Height 4.5 ((S))3 Double Width and Height 4.5 Colour ((C))0 Black 4.5 ((C))1 Red 4.5 ((C))2 Blue 4.5 ((C))3 Violet 4.5 ((C))4 Yellow 4.5 ((C))5 Orange 4.5 ((C))6 Green 4.5 Peter Thomas, Leics 4.5 • FWP Cut and Paste − It is possible to cut a marked block of text in a First Word Plus document and then paste it into another document. Both documents must be loaded first. This may be obvious but I have only just found out – the hard way. Dave Livsey, Devon 4.5 • Impression hints & tips − Now that I am using Impression for the magazine, there are likely to be a number of hints & tips forthcoming. Some of these may be obvious to the more experienced Impression users, but bear with me because some of us are only just beginning and, in fact, the experiences of someone just starting to use an application can often be very helpful to others going through the same hoop. Also, when you have been using an application for a while, you build up the feeling that you know how it works and there may be facilities which you never realised were available which new users pick up. Anyway, here are the first few... 4.5 Adding styles to titles − If you want to add a style to a title, be sure to select the whole line including the carriage return. In other words either put the cursor by the left hand margin and drag down to the next line or triple-click somewhere on the line. (I’m sure you all know that double-click selects a word, triple-click selects a line and quadruple- click (or <ctrl-@>) selects a whole paragraph.) The reason for selecting in this way is that if you only select by dragging across the line, you omit the carriage return which remains in the base style. The problem with this is that if, as in the title lines in Archive, the added style says “reduce the space after the paragraph to zero”, the carriage return still has the full space-after-paragraph so the paragraph spacing remains unchanged. 4.5 Entering point sizes − If you want to change the size of some text, you mark it and press <shift-ctrl-S>. If the dialogue box is empty, you can type in a number, say 18, and it will assume you mean 18 point. If you decide that you want it a bit bigger and press <shift-ctrl-S> again, it comes up with “18pt” in the box. If you then type in, say, 2 <return> it will interpret the “18pt2” as (18+2)pt and will give you 20pt! (Well, it works in version 2.05.) Unfortunately, if you press <-> to try to put, say, -2, it seems to interpret it as an escape and closes the box. 4.5 Marking, deleting and re-typing − (This is something that is obvious to people coming to Impression via the Mac but may have been missed by people brought up through RISC-OS.) If some text is marked, by any means, and you want to replace it by some text you are about to type in, there is no need to delete the marked text first. As soon as you start to type, the marked text is deleted and transferred to the scrap-pad and your typing appears in place of it. The deleted text can be used elsewhere by pasting it in with <ctrl-V>. 4.5 Quick searching − If you want to find something quickly, find/replace is a good way to do it. Call it up with <ctrl-f4> and then, to delete the text already in the dialogue box, press <ctrl-U>, then type in the word you are looking for and press <return>. (This use of <ctrl-U> applies to all dialogue boxes − useful when saving a document under a new name.) Remember though that it searches from the cursor downwards, so add a <ctrl-uparrow> before calling up the find/replace box. (In the version I have, 2.05, the cursor is sometimes not re-displayed in its new position after a find/replace has been executed. In other words, it appears to be still where you left it but it may actually be further down the document so it’s worth getting into the habit of using <ctrl-uparrow> anyway.) Also, don’t get tripped up, as I just did. If you set the “case sensitive” option, it stays set until you switch it off again. So, if you can’t find a word that you know is in there somewhere, check that you have not left it in the case-sensitive mode from the last time you used it. 4.5 Replacing double spaces − I was trying to do a selective search and replace to remove double spaces and replace them with single spaces. When I told it to find the next one, it sometimes didn’t appear to mark anything. Most peculiar! Eventually, I realised what was happening. The text was fully justified and the double spaces (the same would apply to finding single spaces) were between the last word on one line and the first on the next line. Thus Impression was marking the infinitesimally small space at the end of the line, i.e. was marking nothing at all. There’s nothing you can do about it (apart from removing the full justification) but at least if you are aware of the problem, you won’t be so baffled when it happens. 4.5 Searching for hyphens − In some versions of Impression, it is not possible to search and replace hyphens. I discovered this because, for ease of typing, I was using a double hyphen where I wanted a dash in the text, the idea being to replace them later. Impression refused to find any occurrences of hyphen-hyphen. Consultation with CC revealed that improvements in automatic hyphenation have resulted in this problem. The way round it is to search for — and replace it with −. Note the spaces after the backslash and before the 45. 4.5 Smart quotes − If you want smart quotes in a text, i.e. the curly ones instead of the straight ones on the key next to the return key, you can type them in using <ctrl-]> and <ctrl-\> for single quotes and <shift- ctrl-]> and <shift-ctrl-\> for double quotes. However, if you think that’s a bit of a fag to remember, use the normal quotes and then, before printing, save the file (just in case of operator error!), save the text with styles (perhaps to a ram disc as it’s only temporary), select the whole text (<ctrl-T>), delete it and finally drop the saved text back into the document. As the text is re-loaded, quotes are automatically ‘smartened’. 4.5 Switching styles on and off − Those of you brought up in the Mac world may not have realised, as I didn’t until today(!) that if you want something in, say, bold, all you have to do is press <f4> to switch it on, type in the bit that is to be in bold and then press <f4> again. Obvious? Yes, it may be to those who come new to Impression but for those of us steeped in Mac techniques, it comes as a welcome surprise. 4.5 If there are things about using Impression that ‘came as a surprise’ to you, send them in to us (preferably on disc) and we’ll share them with other Impression users. We may even need an Impression Column. 4.5 • Rotor and other games’ passwords − One way to obtain the Rotor passwords (and possibly other games) is to load each of the game’s files into !Edit and use the ‘Find’ option to look for the first password. When the password is found, the remaining passwords should be in the next couple of lines. Andrew Campbell, Devon 4.5 • Sony TV / Monitor − I was told by Beebug that I couldn’t use my Sony TV as a monitor with the A3000, but in fact this is quite easy to do. The sony TV requires a signal on pin 16 (blanking input) of the Scart plug, which can simply be connected to pin 20 (video input). Keith Raven, Slough 4.5 • Z88 file transfer − Here is a little utility for people who wish to transfer files from the Archimedes straight into suspended memory on the Z88. It saves having to break a file into smaller sections first and, of course, there is always a memory overhead in having at least part of the file held in the Z88 Filer. With this BASIC program, the filer is by-passed altogether. 4.5 10 REM >Suspender 4.5 20 REM Transfer file from Arc to Z88 suspended memory 4.5 30 REM ** IMPORTANT: Set z88 receive baud rate at 2400 (in panel) ** 4.5 40 *CAT 4.5 50 *FX 8,5 4.5 60 INPUT “Send file? ”file$ 4.5 70 *FX 3,119 4.5 80 OSCLI(“Type ”+file$) 4.5 90 FOR i%=1 TO 350 4.5 100 PRINT “#” 4.5 110 NEXT i% : REM these pad chars are need for certain types of file 4.5 120 *FX 3,0 4.5 To load a file into PipeDream, enter “:COM” as the “Name of file to load” in the files menu. Then run “Suspender” and immediately press <return> on the Z88. Finally, when the BASIC prompt reappears on the Archimedes screen, press <esc> on the Z88. 4.5 It is kinder to your disc drive to copy the target file into the Archimedes’ RAM filing system first. 4.5 Jonathan Barnes, Watford 4.5 The following Hints and Tips come from Hugh Eagle of the West Sussex Archimedes User Group. 4.5 • Disappearing paragraph spaces in FWP – If, at the end of a paragraph, you type a space immediately before the carriage return, the carriage return will be deleted when you subsequently reformat the paragraph. Believe it or not, this is a “feature” of First Word Plus (documented in the version 1 manual on page 110)! 4.5 • Loading sprite files – When you double click on a sprite file icon, sometimes it is displayed at the bottom left-hand corner of a blank screen and sometimes in a !Paint window. This is because the action the computer takes when you try to “run” a sprite file depends on the contents of the system variable Alias$@RunType_FF9. This variable is defined by default, when the Archimedes is switched on, as “ScreenLoad %0”. The effect of this is that when you double click on a sprite file (type &FF9) icon, the operating system executes the instruction *ScreenLoad [filename]; this clears the screen and then displays the first sprite in the file at the graphics origin. However, when the Desktop Filer “sees” the !Paint application (i.e. when a directory window is opened in which !Paint is included) it runs the !Paint.!Boot file which, amongst other things, redefines Alias$@RunType_FF9 in such a way that when a sprite file is “run” the !Paint application is started up (that is if it is not already running) and the file is loaded in. 4.5 • Listing the contents of your (hard) disk – The operating system command “*Count :4.$.* RV” will catalogue the contents of the root directory and every sub-directory. As explained on pages 279/280 of the User Guide, the output from this command can be redirected to the printer by adapting the command to “*Count :4.$.* RV {printer: } ” 4.5 Note: the spaces around the curly brackets and the > sign are important. 4.5 This method will redirect the output to the printer without displaying it on the screen. An alternative method will send all text that is displayed on the screen to the printer as well: first press <ctrl-B> (i.e. hold down the ctrl key and simultaneously type B), then issue the command “*Count :4.$.* RV” then, when the listing has finished, press <ctrl-C>. 4.5 • Removing PC Access – The menu which appears when you click the menu button over any of the PC Access icons on the icon bar has no Quit option and the application doesn’t seem to appear in the Task Manager window. In fact, the application does appear in the Task Manager window ... in the “Module Tasks” section. Clicking the menu button over the application’s name there and moving to the Task ‘PC Access’ sub-menu gives a “Quit” option. 4.5 • Printing via a PC – For some time I have been perplexed to find that when I try to print a file created by the Archimedes !PrinterLJ printer driver to a LaserJet printer attached to a PC, the printout stops part way down the page. At first I thought it must be because of limited memory in the printer so I tried creating the file at a lower print density but this made no difference to how much of the page was printed. 4.5 I think I have now hit on the answer, namely that, when using the MS-DOS Copy command to print a file which includes control codes, it is a good idea to use the /b “switch”, using the syntax: 4.5 copy [filename]/b LPT1 4.5 The insertion of /b after the filename causes MS-DOS to copy in “binary” mode: i.e. it copies as many bytes as there are in the file. Otherwise, in text mode, copying will continue only until the first end-of-file marker (Ctrl-Z or ASCII character 26) is reached whereupon it will stop. It is of course highly likely that a graphic printfile of many thousands of bytes will contain this character several times, so it is not surprising that only part of the page is printed! 4.5 • Viewing !Draw files – The standard way to view a draw file is to load it into !Draw. However, this has an irritating tendency to place the part of the picture you want to see outside the visible window. There are (at least) two convenient ways of avoiding this problem: 4.5 One is to load the file into the !Display application from Shareware 26. The other is to load it into an Impression frame (or, presumably, a frame in one of the other DTP applications). In either case, the drawing is scaled to fit the frame (the aspect ratio is preserved, so the picture fills either the height of the frame or the width). One advantage of Impression is that the frame can very easily be resized and the drawing thereby magnified; another is that it makes it very simple to display a number of drawings on a page and create an illustrated catalogue. 4.5 • Floppy disc E format – So far as I know, the detailed format of ADFS discs has not been published either in any of the manuals or in Archive. Having recently deleted some files by mistake and been forced into some detective work in order to recover them, I thought it might be helpful to write down what I have found out about “E” format floppy discs:– 4.5 With two sides, 80 tracks on each side, 5 sectors on each track, the disc has 800 sectors of 1024 (&400) bytes each. The sectors can be thought of as being numbered from 0 to 799 in the following order: 4.5 Track Head Sector 4.5 0 0 0 4.5 0 0 1 4.5 0 0 2 4.5 0 0 3 4.5 0 0 4 4.5 0 1 0 4.5 . . . 4.5 0 1 4 4.5 1 0 0 4.5 . . . 4.5 . . . 4.5 79 1 4 4.5 Each byte on the disc has a “disc address” equal to the sector number, as defined above, times &400 plus the number of bytes into the sector. Put it another way: 4.5 the disc address = (((( track * 2 ) + head ) * 5 ) + sector ) * &400 + bytes into sector 4.5 Map format − The first two sectors on the disc contain duplicate copies of the disc map. The first 64 bytes of the map contain the following information: 4.5 byte 0 a checksum byte 4.5 bytes 1/2 the number of bits to the place in the map which marks the first free space on the disc, counting from the beginning of byte 1 (if there is no free space this number will be zero); the top bit of the 16 is always set, so, for instance, the value &8310 in these two bytes would indicate that the first free space in the map could be found &310 bits or &310 DIV 8 bytes from byte 1, i.e. at byte &63 4.5 byte 3 &FF 4.5 bytes 4-35 the “disc record” as described on pages 1012/3 of the PRM containing various details about the disc size, etc. which are the same on all “E” format discs, ending with the Disc ID at bytes 24/5 and the disc name from byte 26 to byte 35. 4.5 bytes 36-63 reserved (all zero) 4.5 bytes 64-863 (800 bytes) – the actual disc map. 4.5 Each byte in the map represents one disc sector and the contents of the map indicate how the disc is divided up between the various objects (directories and files) on it. Each portion of the map is at least 2 bytes long, it begins with an identifying number (max. 15 bits), ends with a 1 in the top bit of the last byte and all the bits in between are zero. Thus, for instance, if the file with the identifying number 7 occupies 3 sectors the relevant portion of the map reads as follows: 4.5 first byte &07 4.5 next byte &00 4.5 last byte &80 (1 in the top bit) 4.5 The lowest identifying number is 2 and is reserved for the four sectors which are initialised when the disc is formatted and which comprise the two map sectors followed by the two sectors containing the root directory. Identifying numbers are then allocated, in order, as new objects are created. 4.5 A file may be fragmented into several pieces, in which case several portions of the map will contain the same identifying number. 4.5 The portions of the map indicating free space on the disc are linked together by a chain of pointers. As mentioned above, bytes 1 and 2, at the start of the map sector, point to the first free space in the map. At that point there is a similar pointer to the next free space (if any) and so on until the last free space is reached, where the pointer is zero. 4.5 A defective sector on the disc is identified in the map by number 1. 4.5 Directory structure − Each directory takes up two sectors. As mentioned above, the root directory occupies the third and fourth sectors on the disc (from disc address &800 to &FFF). Any sub-directory can be located by looking up the relevant entry in its parent directory, finding the identifying number (in the manner described below) and looking up the number in the disc map. 4.5 The first five bytes in a directory contain a checksum byte followed by the string “Nick”. Then there are up to 77 entries of 26 bytes each representing the various objects (files and sub-directories) in the directory. 4.5 The format of each of these entries is: 4.5 bytes 0-9 name of file or sub-directory 4.5 bytes 10-13 load address 4.5 bytes 14-17 execution address 4.5 bytes 18-21 file length 4.5 byte 22 sector offset (see below) 4.5 bytes 23-24 identifying number as used in the map 4.5 byte 25 file attributes. 4.5 If the top 12 bits of the load address are all set (i.e. are &FFF) this means that the file is “stamped” and the remainder of the load and execution address fields are used to record the file type and date stamp as follows: 4.5 load address FFFtttdd 4.5 execution addressdddddddd 4.5 (the bottom byte of the load address field being used for the top byte of the 5-byte format date and time record). 4.5 Note: in a disc sector editor which shows the bytes in order with the lowest byte of each word first, these 8 bytes will appear as “dd tt Ft FF dd dd dd dd”. 4.5 If not all the top 12 bits are set, the load and execution addresses will (as their names suggest) determine what the computer does when the file is *LOADed or *RUN (or double-clicked from the Desktop). 4.5 The sector offset in byte 22 is used where two files are mapped into the same portion of the disc. In such a case the files share the same identifying number (in bytes 23/4) but byte 22 indicates how many sectors into the portion each file starts. 4.5 A typical example of this would involve two small files each fitting into one disc sector (they might for instance be !Boot, !Run or !Sprites files within an application directory). Because the minimum size of a map entry is 2 bytes representing 2 sectors on the disc, it would be inefficient to give each file a separate map entry, so the two files would be made to share. In this case, assuming the shared identifying number is say 8, bytes 23 and 24 of the directory entries for both files would be &08 and &00 but byte 22 would be &01 for the file that occupies the first sector and &02 for the second. 4.5 In the usual situation where a file has a map entry to itself, byte 22 is zero. 4.5 The bits of byte 25 (the file attributes byte) are used as follows: 4.5 bit 0 object has read access for you 4.5 bit 1 object has write access for you 4.5 bit 2 undefined 4.5 bit 3 object is locked against deletion 4.5 bit 4 object has read access for others 4.5 bit 5 object has write access for others 4.5 bit 6 undefined 4.5 bit 7 undefined 4.5 Bits 4 and 5 only have meaning to the network filing system. Bits 2, 6 and 7 should be set to zero. 4.5 General note: If you want to explore disc maps and directories it is very handy to have a disc sector editor such as the !DiscEdit appli cation on Careware 2. Failing that it is reasonably easy to construct a program to read from a disc sector by sector (rather than file by file) and to display the contents. The key to such a program is the SWI call “ADFS_DiscOp”. For instance, the BASIC instruction: 4.5 SYS “ADFS_DiscOp”,0,1,address%,buffer%,length% 4.5 will read starting at the “disc address” (as defined above) given in the variable address%, the number of bytes given in length% (1024 for one sector) into the address in RAM stored in buffer%. Obviously, a certain amount of caution is advisable since a very similar command (replacing 1 with 2 for instance) could result in writing to and corrupting the contents of a disc. 4.5 4.5 4.5 {4 .5 4.5 Comment Column 4.5 • RISC OS 2.01 and the A540 – Having had the opportunity to play with a working (!) A540, I have been able to compare the RISC-OS 2.01 machine with an A310 RISC-OS 2.00 machine. The first obvious difference between the ROMs is the addition of three new modules – IRQ Utils, Window Utils and ARM3 Support. 4.5 Of the 37 ROM modules now listed, 17 have been updated and 6 of these have had multiple updates. Interestingly, the new ROMs appears to be 15 bytes shorter than the old version. Obviously someone has spent a bit of time optimising code. I have not directly compared the *Help text to see if memory has been saved there, but it appears much as it always did. 4.5 Skimming through appendices to the various manuals, I note that provision is made to cater for a maximum of 8Mb of JEDEC type ROM and the board has numerous connectors for all kinds of goodies, such as genlocks, third party video attachments, etc. It must also be admitted that the new manuals seem to be a great advance on some of their predecessors and give a lot of good information. The section dealing with monitor support is a real eye-opener: absolutely full connector diagrams and hints. It would be fascinating to get a glimpse of the new A540 technical Reference Manual when it sees the light of day – what clues to future developments must be contained with its cover! 4.5 It is very hard to be objective but the whole feel of the A540 is very good – as it ought to be at the price − and the speed is obviously a whole new dimension. The only quibble I have is the noise of the two fans – perhaps someone could produce a Lancaster Flight Simulator to capitalise on the racket! 4.5 John Fidler, Isle of Wight 4.5 • Clares/EMR clash? − In response to D Hill (Archive 4.3 p 16) who had problems with EMR’s Midi podule and Clares’ Armadeus... I had similar problems − a lot of software will not ‘recognise’ the EMR Midi board. On ringing EMR, I was told quite the opposite regarding EMR policy as regards Acorn Guidelines. They admit that their boards are not guaran teed to conform with Acorn protocol and that to assist with compatibility, they sell a piece of software for £6.95 to make it work! What a nerve to charge money for this software, especially when, before buying this EMR Midi 4 board, I was told over the telephone that the boards would work with all Midi software. 4.5 Leslie Hay, Kincardineshire. 4.5 • Converting Archimedes programs to DOS machines – “I think that it is not generally known that BBC BASIC is available as a program to run under MS-DOS. At first this may not seem too brilliant an idea for Archimedes’ users, but it can be for those wishing to write assembly language as the built-in assembler is an 8086 one and works just the same as the other Acorn assemblers we have all grown to love (?). In addition of course it means that (some of) one’s BBC/Archimedes BASIC software can be made to run on a normal DOS machine. 4.5 Writing 8086 assembly language will no doubt be seen by many as a backward step, but there is no denying the popularity of machines using this family of processors. 4.5 John Waterman, Kent 4.5 • A Joystick Adaptor – The Serial Port’s gadget is packed into a neat box with Archimedes and printer sockets at the ends, two joystick D9‘s and a printer / games switch on the top. The package is supplied with two programs which allow you to define the effect of the joystick actions. Their ‘Tutor’ program prompts for stick actions and a matching key stroke, with which it makes a command file for the joystick Rmodule – my early version lacked <Shift>, <Ctrl> and <Shift><Ctrl> functions. Alternatively, their ‘Compiler’ program can be used to convert text files with simple keywords for stick actions, flags and logic to produce a similar command file. Example files were included with the package and included most games. Price £23.95. 4.5 Nick Kelly, Liverpool 4.5 • ARM3’s − In November, Watford Electronics said that they had such big stocks of ARM3 chips and that they were not worried that the latest batches would not run at 30MHz. In the February editions of some BBC/ Archimedes magazines, Watford are listing 20MHz ARM3 upgrades at £50 less than the 30MHz upgrade. Hmm.... Stuart Bell, Brighton. 4.5 • More on ARM3’s − Aleph One, makers of the original ARM3 upgrade write... 4.5 The performance enhancement of an Archimedes using an ARM3 upgrade, compared to the native ARM2, is strongly dependent on the screen mode and somewhat dependent on the actual task. 4.5 It is also dependent on the clock speed, but only weakly so in the range of interest. For example, the 4.3% drop in clock speed from 30 MHz to 28.75 MHz produces only a 2.4% drop in the speed of the “Whetstones” test and only 1.5% in the “Dhrystones” test and only 0.7% in the “Megaflops” test. Changing mode from the lower modes to some of the higher ones can, by contrast, produce a change of 9% to 14% in speed. Since the effect of having an ARM3 at all is to multiply the speed of the machine by factors of from 3 to 6, the impairment due to a clock speed of less than 30 MHz is tiny in comparison and not detectable by the user. 4.5 In future, we shall make no specific claim as to the clock speed of our ARM3 upgrades except that it will not be less than 24 MHz. In practice, we are at present shipping upgrades running at 28.75 MHz. 4.5 • IBM versus Archimedes − The best reason for buying an Acorn Archimedes is because you want to own an Acorn Archimedes! If someone wants to own an IBM PC or a computer that will run IBM PC software then I would always recommend them to buy an IBM PC. 4.5 I have always told my friends and colleagues that there are two types of people who buy a computer to use at home. There are those people who are primarily going to buy (or acquire!!) ready made software and use it, and there are those who are mainly interested in writing programs. The former can do no better than buy an IBM PC because there is so much software available for them (of course much of it is in the £400 to £500 price bracket). 4.5 The other type of purchaser would need his head examined if he choses a PC!! I say this with some feeling because I spend my working life programming PC’s to support the hardware that I design and I am constantly amazed at the inconsistencies and peculiarities that exist within the IBM DOS and BIOS. It just shows the power of IBM that they can foist such a dog’s breakfast on the world and force it to become a standard. Later versions and 386/486 machines aren’t really helped that much because they have to maintain compatibility with the earlier versions. 4.5 From a programmer’s point of view, I find the Acorn machines (BBC B onwards) the best thought out and most consistent programmer interface, with the desktop providing a consistent user interface. I think the bulletin boards show how it is relatively easy to produce a Desktop Utility, judging by the number they have for downloading, this certainly can’t be said for Gem or Windows based utilities. 4.5 All I am really trying to say to Michael Green is that all his com plaints seem to be on the IBM PC side of things so why doesn’t he buy a PC to run his PC software on, but if he wants to program it, I can guarantee him plenty of head scratching and sleepless nights. Try using a bulletin board to get in touch with someone who designed your PC and try to get him to answer technical questions about the operating system! 4.5 Philip Jones, Clapton. 4.5 • IDE drives − I purchased an IDE 80M drive, controller etc, for an A310 from the Computer Shopper Show. Upon returning home, I was very impressed at the amount of packaging used to protect the mechanism. 4.5 I found the installation very straight-forward and the instructions more than adequate, although the point about a link having to be removed if the interface is to be used without a backplane (as I am) should have been emphasised a lot more, as I believe that not doing so will destroy the interface. Installation took me around a quarter of an hour from removing the cover of the computer, to replacing it. My only disappoint ment is that the fan is quite loud! 4.5 I would also like to congratulate Mr. Copestake on his service, as a few days after I started using my drive, a fault developed which rendered my drive useless. I made one phone call (to an answer machine) which was very promptly returned and, after an explanation of the fault, a new drive was dispatched to me, which I received the next day, along with a very apologetic letter and instructions to call him again once I was satisfied that the new drive was OK, in order for him to arrange collection of the faulty one. 4.5 This is what I call service − congratulations Ian Copestake Software. 4.5 The drives come formatted with a few utilities on them: A formatting program, a program to create a PC partition, one to identify the mechanism and return the number of cylinders, sectors etc., and a test program which performs speed tests and allows comparison with other mechanisms. My only complaint here is that the test program will not work in 1 Mbyte, even though the Help file says otherwise. I managed to get it to work by completely re-configuring my machine and running it from the supervisor. My drive is rated by ICS at 19ms − this program returned an average value of 21.3ms, a track to track time of 6.1ms and a transfer rate of 460 Kbytes/sec in mode 12 peaking at 740 Kbytes/sec. How do these figures compare?* Overall, I am very impressed with this product, and would recommend them to anybody who either doesn’t need the extra speed and expandability that SCSI devices offer or for those who, like me, are working to a smaller budget. 4.5 I F Rhodes, Wolverhampton. 4.5 *The speed of an Oak 80M SCSI drive is 660 Kbytes/second in mode 12 and a 42M removable runs at 590 Kbytes/sec. Ed. 4.5 • Jiglet in Use − Having reviewed Jiglet prior to using it in a classroom situation, I feel that some comments regarding its use are now in order. Most groups of pupils with whom the program has been used were experiencing the WIMP environment on the Archimedes/A3000 for the first time. In an attempt to provide pupils with the I.T. skills they will need in the compulsory subject areas (to satisfy National Curriculum and provide them with a good range of skills) all 11/12 year old pupils follow an introductory course involving the main software applications. The use of Jiglet in this course was a deliberate ploy following discussion with an I.T. colleague. The operation of the program entails using several standard RISC-OS techniques, i.e. installing on the icon bar and dragging in files (Jiglets) which we considered worthwhile. 4.5 The program was introduced in the second lesson − following an introduc tion to the A3000 and some of the sample applications on Applications Disc 2. The double click of <select> to install (load) the program and the dragging down of a Jiglet file were accomplished with a minimum of fuss by all. The well designed main window (front end − if you prefer jargon) was easy for the pupils to understand. They soon picked up how to set the options they required, change shape, number of pieces and rotation. Once into New Jiglet, swapping between selecting a piece of screen and placing a piece of screen caused a little confusion for some. This mix up between pressing <select> or <menu> and the associated problems of no piece to place or returning to choose another piece before placing the previous one were overcome by even the least able after a few minutes use. Calling the mouse buttons by the RISC-OS names of ‘select’, ‘menu’ and ‘adjust’ is probably preferable to left, middle and right not only because of the RISC-OS conventions but for those pupils who do not know left from right! 4.5 Completing the pictures was not a substantial problem for most of the 11/12 year olds. At the most difficult level, with the pieces rotated, several of the pictures are a challenge requiring careful thought. As a test of ‘spatial’ ability, the program is much more suitable for primary school children. This has been confirmed by a friend who, after being shown the program, immediately persuaded his Headteacher to purchase it. The primary school children are reported to be enthralled by this program. They have the expected increased difficulty in completing some of the Jiglets. The highest level of difficulty did indeed provide a challenge for some less able 16 year olds I found myself supervising during the absence of a colleague − they enjoyed it once they had mastered the operation of the mouse. 4.5 Jiglet is not used as an introduction to the A3000 in the primary school but as a resource in topic work. The children create a picture relevant to their topic using an art package, save this as a sprite and then transfer it to Jiglet. From here it may be completed by other members of the class; the alternative being to print it out and, using the facility to print a blank Jiglet, turn it into a paper based jigsaw. Indeed this ability to transfer sprites has been used with the 11/12 year olds. Following their experience of an art package (the excellent Flare) they are given the task of producing a picture suitable for turning into a Jiglet. The variety and standard of pictures produced by all ability levels with the motivation of others completing their Jiglet is outstanding. 4.5 Using this program as part of the introduction to using the A3000 has given the pupils enjoyment as well as providing varied learning situations/experiences. It has, owing to the nature of RISC-OS, also enabled the integrating of applications. This program has been a useful acquisition and 4mation’s policy of including a site licence in the price makes the program so much more useful. Roger Nelson, Durham. A 4.5 4.5 Matters Arising 4.5 • !ChartDraw and !KeyStrip (on Careware 5) have been considerably improved by the author Dr Chris Johnson. You can upgrade your original by sending Chris a blank formatted disc and the return postage. His address can be found in the ‘ReadMe’ file of both applications. 4.5 • Using !Draw1½ on Shareware 34 − Some people have found that the !Draw1½ application on the Shareware 34 disc sometimes fails with a ‘Fatal error internal type 3’. This is because the floating point emulator module must be loaded before running !Draw1½ (this module can be found in the ‘Modules’ directory of Applications Disc Two). The run file didn’t include a reference to the FPEmulator module as the exact location of the module may not be relied on. However, if you wish you can put the module in the ‘!System.Modules’ directory and add the following lines (after the line that reads RMEnusre Shared CLib, etc) to the !Run file using !Edit: 4.5 RMEnsure 2.80 Load System 4.5 .Modules.FPEmulator 4.5 RMEnsure 2.80 Error 0 4.5 F 4.5 4.5 Hardware Column 4.5 Brian Cowan 4.5 I have been delving into the inside of my new Archimedes A540, primarily in order to install an external floppy disc drive but I thought I would fill you in on my observations. 4.5 Beefy power supply 4.5 A complaint I have heard against the 540 is its noise. The machine has a hefty great power supply which fits down most of the left hand side of the machine, and it incorporates two fans. These are the source of the noise. The fan filter extends down the entire left side of the PSU. At last Acorn have provided a power supply capable of supporting some greedy expansion cards. Personally, I am not disturbed too much by the noise. In the past I have had aged hard disc drives making more noise. That was distressing but, by comparison, this is soothing. 4.5 Lithium cell 4.5 Out goes the battery of two alkali cells, and in its place is a lithium cell, as in the A3000. I must find out about the lifetime of these, as replacement does not seem trivial. I have just changed the alkali cells on a batch of older Archimedes, having learned the hard way of the perils of forgetful CMOS RAM. I am sure it makes sense to go for lithium cells, but I am reminded of that early batch of BBC Masters whose lithium cells started exploding − but Acorn have presumably solved that little problem! 4.5 RISC-OS ROMs 4.5 The four ROMs in the 540 are located under the back of the hard disc drive. This makes it slightly inconvenient to replace them, but presumably they will not be changed too often. In my 540, they are actually EPROMs in anticipation, I assume, of RISC-OS version three. A brief note tells me that my 540 contains RISC-OS version 2.01. This is essentially the old version (2.00) of the operating system, with some additions to support the new hardware in the machine. 4.5 Extended RAM 4.5 RAM configurations of 4, 8, 12 and 16 Mbytes are catered for automati cally. However this does not extend to the PC emulator. To use this in a machine with greater than 4 Mbytes of RAM, you need a “patch” available from Acorn. The problem is that the emulator does not support MEMC chips working in the master/slave configuration. 4.5 Cache control 4.5 There are two star commands relating to the ARM3 processor. These are *cacheon and *cacheoff, just as with the Aleph One ARM3 upgrade. Their functions should be self explanatory. Unfortunately, I have not ascertained whether the 540 also permits flushing of the cache although I have had no cause to use this. 4.5 Modes 4.5 Finally, there are some new screen modes available to support VGA and Super VGA. This sounds good in theory, but with such monitors you can’t use most of the old Archimedes modes. Fortunately help is at hand with the Atomwide video support utility; with these monitors you can’t really do with out it. (The A540 Utilities Disc is available for £5 from Atomwide.) 4.5 Circuit board 4.5 It is noticeable that the circuit board is very densely populated − much more so than the previous machines. There is an abundance of surface mounted resistors and capacitors, although no semiconductors, so far as I can see. The ARM family chip set are mounted in sockets (except for the ARM3 itself which is mounted on its own board) and there are some PALs, also in sockets. Sockets are reassuring to those thinking of the future, although of course the most direct expansion route will be the three RAM board sockets. There is space for the Econet board, just as on the previous models and it uses exactly the same Econet module as the Master and the ordinary Archimedes. 4.5 Floppy disc drives 4.5 The reason I dismantled the machine was to install an external floppy disc drive. I still have some software, particularly DOS programs, on 5¼ inch discs. Unfortunately, I was in for a surprise. Although the internal floppy disc drive is mounted in a similar place, in a similar way, the connectors on the circuit board are positioned differently. The signal and the power sockets are mounted right at the front of the circuit board, under the drive support “bridge“. So to get to the sockets, in order to install an extended connector, would involve the removal of the circuit board from the case. Also, the sort of extension connector used for external drives on the 300 and 400 series would not fit anyway. 4.5 The simplest way of connecting an external drive is to tee in at the connector to the internal drive. You need a ribbon cable about half a metre long with a plug and a socket at one end spaced about two centimetres apart. If the plug into the drive is pulled out, it can be inserted into the socket on the extension lead, and the lead’s plug fitted into the drive socket. A connector at the other end will attach to the external drive. Note that on these machines there is no reversing of connections as on the older models. If there are any loading problems then all you need to do is to remove the termination resistors on the external drive. Also remember that you might need to change the configured step time for the external drive if it is one of the older, slower drives. 4.5 Archimedes portable? 4.5 There has been some speculation in the press about the possible appearance of a portable Archimedes computer. There are rumours of three ARM based portables under development. Archimedes guru Mike Harrison, of White Wing Logic, has been exploring the feasibility of producing a portable based on an A3000 board. This has the advantage that most of the circuitry is already present, including the RISC-OS ROMs. A smaller keyboard would have to be found, and a suitable LCD screen. Also, there would have to be power saving circuitry to enable battery operation for any reasonable length of time. Acorn are also said to be working on a portable Archimedes, although in the utmost secrecy. I am not sure what market Acorn are aiming for, but presumably they have their eye on education. If this is so, I am sure that a monochrome screen would not be terribly popular but a colour LCD display of any appreciable size would be prohibitively expensive. We will have to wait and see. 4.5 Apparently, it seems there might be a third ARM based portable under development by ex-Acorn Herman Hauser, now of the Electric Book Company. However, it is not clear if such a machine would contain RISC-OS. It is known that Acorn are not happy about licensing the Archimedes operating system to third parties, and this computer would probably be aimed at some quite specific application. In fact, it might even be that Hauser’s machine and the Acorn portable are based on the same hardware, simply using different operating systems. 4.5 My worry about these portable projects is that since we are becoming spoilt by larger capacity hard discs, ARM3 CPUs and bigger and better high resolution colour monitors, a basic model portable might be something of a disappointment. 4.5 Oak apples 4.5 Acorn have joined with Apple and VLSI Technology (the manufacturers of the ARM chip set) to establish a new company called Advanced Risc Machines Ltd. The tie-up with Apple is intriguing. There is already an ARM based graphics accelerator for the Mac and there are whispers that the Mac operating system has been translated into ARM code. If this sees the light of day then it might well be in the guise of a portable Mac. However, my own view is that since the advent of Impression II, there is no need for Archimedes owners to think enviously about Macs! (See Ed’s comments in the Comment Column.) 4.5 There is news of an ARM600 CPU chip being developed by this company. Information is scant at the moment, but it sounds exciting. 4.5 Mike Hobart adds... Unofficial sources say that ARM4 may be renamed to make it sound more upmarket! They also say it will come as a package with 4Mb RAM. I guess it will not mostly be on-chip, but I also guess that the FPU and MEMC will be. I believe that a new version of VIDC is under development, which will offer a much larger range of greys. It is also said that the provisions for parallel processing which are already available in ARM3 (see RISC-User July/August 1989) will be used in the new ARM4 systems. There are said to be testbed machines with several ARM4s all under the command of a supervisor ARM4, which presumably handles I/O. The result is not slow! I also hear that a MAC emulator exists and impressed Apple. No news on availability. A 4.5 4.5 Small Ads 4.5 • A3000 1Mb RAM board (upgradable to 4Mb) £60. Phone (Derby) 0332−701969. 4.5 • A3000 with 2Mb, 2 mice, BASIC Guide, Assy Lang book, much software + 25 blank discs £700 ono. Simon on 0954−719578 after 6. 4.5 • A310 base £400. David Howe on 0255− 431604 (evenings). 4.5 • A310 with twin drives, colour monitor & software £600. Phone 0743−248107. 4.5 • Acorn DTP £40, FWPlus1 £20, Software Developer’s Toolbox £40, System Delta Plus £20. (A donation of £5 will be made to Committee to Stop War in Gulf for each item sold.) Miles Sabin 081−980−2455. 4.5 • Apocalypse £10, Interdictor (1) £10, Conqueror £8, CIS Minipack 5 (Fish, Fireball 2, Pon) £16, Render Bender £35, Nevryon £10, Pacmania £4. Ring Mark on 0285−654346 evenings. 4.5 • Capsoft Disc N°1 − drawn fonts, borders, frames etc. Send £6 to B.J.Thompson, 8 Oldgate Avenue, Weston-on-Trent, Derbyshire, DE7 2BZ. 4.5 • Colour Digitising − up to A4 size. Phone Ken Warwick on 081−500−5701. 4.5 • Digitisation − Artwork or VHS tape images digitised, call Ned Abell on 02922−249. Prices by arrangement. 4.5 • Epson GQ3500 2Mb memory, 3 toner cartridges, HP Laserjet emulation, 8 downloadable fonts £600. T.Medhurst 0380−818441 ext 228. 4.5 • Epson LQ2500 hardly used, 2 new ribbons £425 ono. Phone Rudi on 081−967−4401. 4.5 • FWPlus1 £30, First fonts (Maths Phys) for Star LC10 £15. Ring 0925−811420. 4.5 • Home for much loved Archimedes required − Perfect A440 colour £1500. Phone Roger 081−767−8684 (7.30 p.m. to 8.30 p.m.). 4.5 • MEMC 1a £54, 514256 80ns memory chips £5 each, PC Emulator v1.33 £50, Apocalypse £12, Hoverbod £5, Pacmania £5, Quazer £5, Startrader £5, Terramex £7, Watford’s 5.25“ disc buffer for A300/400 series £12. New KXP-1124 printer ribbon £8. Richard Cheung on 081–206−2324. 4.5 • Micro Peripherals MP165 NLQ printer, hardly used £100. Phone Vincent on 05086−3517 (near Norwich). 4.5 • Ram 62256 LP10. Two for £16. Phone Les on 0202−529787 (p.m.) for availability. 4.5 • Tracker £25, SoundSynth £20, Render Bender £30, Arthur PRM’s £10, Terramex £4, Word Up/Word Down £4, Nevryon £8, Hostages £8 (new). Contact Jeremy Mears on 0242−521050. 4.5 • Viewstore £15, Logistix £35, Sony 3.5“ drive + dual slot fascia £75, WWPlus £15, ANSI ‘C’ £15, 27128 EPROMs (12.5V) £3 each. All prices o.n.o. Phone 0234−856070. 4.5 • Wimp based address book and 700k of PD software. Send £1, blank formatted disk and S.A.E. to M Pargeter, 1 The Ridgeway, Hitchin, Herts, SG5 2BT. 4.5 • Wanted − Impression and Poster. Phone 0332−701969. 4.5 • Z88 with 256Kb extra RAM, power supply, Archimedes link, utility disc, all manuals. £200. Call Jonathan Barnes on Watford (0923) 224560. 4.5 Charity Sales − The following items are available for sale in aid of charity. PLEASE do not just send money − ring us on 0603−766592 to check if the items are still available. Thank you. 4.5 (If you have unwanted software or hardware for Archimedes computers, please send it in to the Archive office. If you have larger items where post would be expensive, just send us details of the item(s) and how the purchaser can get hold of them.) 4.5 Trivial Pursuit £9, Acorn ROM/RAM podule £18, StarTrader £5, Quazer £3, Minerva’s Sales, Nominal, Purchase Ledgers and Order Processing and Invoicing, full manuals, £35 the lot, Interdictor 1 £6, Holed Out £8, Corruption £3, CIS Utilities £5, Brother HR15 + 6 daisy wheels £60 (buyer collects from Fleet, Hants), Logistix 2 (brand new) £40, Artisan Support Disc £2, Front Fascia for single drive A310 £5. A 4.5 4.5 Competition Corner 4.5 Colin Singleton 4.5 This month’s puzzle is for Mastermind enthusiasts. I don’t mean Magnus Magnusson. I mean that game which was all the rage a few years ago, played on small plastic peg-boards. We used to play it in our coffee breaks using pencil and paper, long before the commercial version appeared. I will describe our version. 4.5 One player thinks of a secret four digit number (leading zeros are permitted) and the other has to deduce it by intelligent guesswork. Each guess must be a four digit number, and the first player awards a score to each guess. 4.5 The score is in two parts. The first indicates the number of digits in the guess which are also in the secret number. The second indicates how many of these are in the correct position in the number. Note that if a digit occurs more than once in either the guess or the target, there must also be duplicates in the other number for both (or all) to count in the first part of the score. Thus if the target is 0112, a guess of 1234 earns a score of 2 & 0. A guess of 1122 scores 3 & 2. 4.5 The second player must find the secret number (which scores 4 & 4) in the fewest guesses. 4.5 What should the first guess be? Whatever your guess, there are, in general, fourteen possible scores. When you are told the score for your guess, you can then reduce the initial 10000 possible numbers to a much shorter list. I believe the best strategy is to offer the number which, if it earns the score which still leaves the longest list of possibili ties, ensures that that list is as short as possible. 4.5 What is that number? There are several answers, please find the numerically smallest. 4.5 Assume then that you continue to follow this strategy, always offering the guess which will minimise the list of possibilities for the worst- case score (always offering the smallest number where there is a choice). If you are unlucky enough to be given the worst score every time (the one which leaves the largest number of possibilities), what is the sequence of guesses, and what is the secret number? 4.5 Entries and comments please either to Paul at N.C.S. or direct to me at 41 St Quentin Drive, Sheffield S17 4PN. 4.5 Any volunteers for the word version? The target, and every guess, must be an English five-letter word. Not so easy! 4.5 The October (Bingo) competition, regrettably, is cancelled for lack of interest. The winner for November (Seven Dwarfs) will be announced next month. A 4.5 4.5 EFF 4.5 New artwork 4.5 4.5 Atomwide 4.5 From 4.4 page 6 4.5 4.5 IFEL A310 4M Upgrade 4.5 Stuart A Bell 4.5 At 11.07 a.m. on Tuesday morning, the courier collected my Archimedes A310. Less than 48 hours later, it returned, having completed a round trip of about 500 miles. More importantly, it now had 3M more memory, my credit card having been debited by £399. 4.5 In the beginning 4.5 When I bought my A310 three years ago, 1M had seemed an awful lot − I’d tried to buy a 305, but the dealer had persuaded me to go for the full 1M. Since then I’d bought Impression, which works perfectly well in 1M, but even more nicely with a great big font cache and multi-tasked with FontFX and Draw. I wanted more memory, but held back when I saw the prices! 4.5 CJE were perhaps first in the field, with an approach that involved significant work on the main Archimedes board. Later, Atomwide, Computerware, Protokote and Watford joined in, all using a less invasive installation method that requires the temporary removal of the MEMC device and either the VIDC or the RISC-OS ROM chips. (See the compara tive review ‘A310 Memory Upgrades’ in Archive 3.10). For a while, I toyed with the DIY upgrade by Willi Langhans mentioned in Archive, but knew that my electronics skills weren’t really up to it. 4.5 The IFEL board 4.5 In Archive 4.1, I first saw the advert for the IFEL board. It quoted £499 inc VAT fully fitted, and mentioned the option of DIY fitting. (A 2M version is also available − for simplicity that will be ignored in this review.) A phone call confirmed a DIY price of £399 and arranged for the sending of literature. 4.5 IFEL have followed the CJE approach, in that chips have to be removed from the main board, and a new board plugged into sockets where the chips were. However, IFEL have reduced the ‘chips-to-be-removed’ count from nine to three, at the expense of an extra line to the MEMC and the moving of the ends of thirty-two resistors from the original RAM to the new RAM board. This board sits under the disc-drive support bar, above the original memory, well clear of the ARM device. Benefitting from being a recent design, it uses only eight memory chips, namely 1M x 4 dynamic RAMs. 4.5 In December, further literature from IFEL showed that the DIY price had dropped to £349, whilst the fitted price (still £499) included either a free MEMC1a or a free podule backplane. The detailed installation instructions showed that the chips to be removed need only be cut out, and so I arranged with a friend who is rather more adept with a soldering iron to help me with the upgrade. 4.5 Telephoning IFEL in mid-January produced the news that the fitted price had come down to £399 inc VAT, including courier collection and delivery. Since IFEL can offer a guarantee with a fitted board that they couldn’t possibly offer for DIY installations, I ordered one immediately. The machine was picked up the following morning... which is where we came in. 4.5 From a hardware point of view, one almost has to accept IFEL’s word that they’ve done the upgrade, so neatly does the board hide away. ARM3 upgrades should be no problem. In my order to IFEL, I’d said, ‘I can’t really expect that the free MEMC1a offer is still on, but if it is, I’ll have one, please.’ Yes, sure enough, when the Archimedes came back, there was a MEMC1a in place. Also, IFEL had put in a more recent version of the ROM on my Oak SCSI board, entirely free of charge! 4.5 I do have one small complaint − after all, this is supposed to be a review and not an advert. When my machine was reassembled, the self- tapping screws that hold down my SCSI drive were left very loose, so that the drive rocked on the support bar. The consequences of travel in that state just might have caused damage but, thankfully, it didn’t. 4.5 The competition 4.5 Looking at the headings under which Paul discussed the Watford, Protokote and Computerware boards in his original review, we can draw the following observations: 4.5 ARM3 compatibility. As noted above, this should be no problem − but it’s always best to check first. Certainly, the board is clear of the ARM and MEMC − and also the VIDC, should you want to install Atomwide’s VIDC enhancer. 4.5 Quality of Construction. From what one can see of the board − and of the photos in the literature − the board is well made. The soldering is very neat, with no massive headers and connectors, there should be no problems with reliability or loose contacts. 4.5 Fitting. The DIY option is there for the very competent electronics expert, but is it worth saving £50? At 47½ hours for the Brighton- Cornwall round trip, there can be no complaints about turn-around time. 4.5 Upgrading. IFEL do offer a 2M version of the board. Upgrading requires removal of the sixteen devices used on the 2M board and replacement with the eight larger chips. Obviously, IFEL will give a price for an upgrade. However, standard RAMs are used and no other components are needed, so a DIY upgrade is possible, However, if funds permit, starting with 4M will be cheaper in the long-term. 4.5 Price. Scanning the pages of magazines show that current prices are typically as follows: (all prices inc VAT and P&P) 4.5 IFEL £399 4.5 CJE (Beebug) £519 4.5 Computerware (Archive) £540* 4.5 Atomwide (Copestake) £574 4.5 ??? (Technomatic) £598 4.5 Protokote (Archive) £600* 4.5 (*Note that Archive no longer supply A310 memory upgrades − I have simply used the old prices for comparison.) 4.5 Availability. As I’m writing this three days after placing the order, it would seem to be no problem. IFEL apparently bought a large stock of the 1M x 4 devices, which should ensure availability and, hopefully, some immunity from the RAM price increases to which Paul referred in the editorial of Archive 4.4. As always, though, check before ordering. 4.5 Conclusions. On the day my machine came back, I’m very impressed and I can’t see why I won’t continue to be. In comparison with the plug-in designs, down-grading to 1M would be rather more difficult, but not impossible. On the other hand, IFEL claim that reliability with soldered-in designs should be better than those using headers and ribbon cables. At the price, and with the service that I experienced, it seems a highly competitive product. Most importantly, it opens up a whole new world of Impression II with a 500 Kbyte font cache, memory intensive screen modes and the multi-tasking of several large applications, thus enjoying the full power of RISC-OS for the first time. 4.5 Steve Picton of IFEL comments... The question of the loose disc drive screws is something of a mystery. The main A310 circuit board can be both removed from and put back into the casing with all the disc drives in place. This is true even with the RAM board in position and so there would have been no need to adjust the securing screws. However, we generally like to check things other than the RAM itself − a new fan filter for instance − so I must concede that this is something which should have been spotted. 4.5 As regards the new version of the Oak software, I should point out that the update was not the latest version referred to in Archive 4.3.15. A charge of about £10 is made for this. It was simply a change from version 1.03 to 1.04, which was known to fix the bug causing problems with certain icons. Obviously we have Oak’s permission to do this. (The really new version of Oak software mentioned two months ago now as being ready, is still, unfortunately not ready. Ed.) A 4.5 4.5 I.F.E.L. 4.5 New artwork 4.5 4.5 Computer Concepts 4.5 New artwork 4.5 4.5 Computer Concepts 4.5 New artwork 4.5 4.5 4.5 4.5 PipeLine 4.5 Gerald Fitton 4.5 First of all we have a few bits and pieces from various readers and then a tutorial on databases. 4.5 ‘Incorrect number of output bits’ 4.5 George Thompson says that he got this printer error message after changing the background anti-aliasing pixel colour on any text. Is the module causing the problem the Colours, FontManager, !Printer, FPEmula tor even the CLib module? Does anybody know what’s going on? 4.5 Key strips 4.5 Professor John Greening has sent me examples of two kinds of key strip. These two files together with a ReadMe file are on the Archive monthly disc and will be included on the April 1991 PipeLine disc. 4.5 String handling functions 4.5 Steve Steadman’s suggestion for an improvement to PipeDream is that it should include string handling functions such as the MID$(...) function in BASIC. He also suggests a new date type which shows just the month and the year as in February 1991 or 2.91 instead of the full date. 4.5 Unwanted line feeds 4.5 Steve Harratt and I corresponded over this problem which he had with an HP Deskjet 500. Steve finally decided to look inside and found that the dip switch settings were for American sized paper! This is longer than our A4. There are two banks of 8 switches called A and B. Steve recommends that all switches are OFF except A3, A4, A6, A7, A8, B1 and B2. He can then print to within 2mm of the top margin and has no problem with unwanted form feeds. He has written to his UK supplier! 4.5 He finishes this topic saying “However, for some reason I can get more on a page when using the PipeDream Printer Driver instead of RISC-OS . . . “. Can anyone shed any light on this? 4.5 Sideways scrolling 4.5 A letter to me from Anne Davies provides a solution to the question of Joe Buhagiar (from Australia). Joe wanted to know how to move sideways by more than one column per key press. Anne suggests defining a function key combination such as <ctrl-shift-f11> with a string which moves the cursor three (or more if you want) columns to the right. The function key definition is \CNC|M\CNC|M\CNC|M. If you include more \CNC|M then you will jump more columns. Similarly, you can define a movement to the left using \CNC|M in the key definition. 4.5 PipeDream on the Z88 4.5 I now have a Z88. Aren’t they wonderful little machines? Now on Saturday mornings (when I don’t have to get up early) I can tap away writing the PipeLine column in bed and transfer it to the Archimedes later with the !Z88 application. I’m thrilled to bits! 4.5 A Simple Database 4.5 Last month, I described what is perhaps the simplest of databases. Each record uses one row in a PipeDream document and has values for every one of five ‘Fields’. This month I shall describe what I think is an instructive (but not the best) way of adding a new record and how to use the database to generate ‘form letters’. I shall also show one way of producing labels using dependent documents leaving a second method (using a parameter file) for next month. 4.5 If you already have last month’s file ([Girls]) then you can modify it by inserting a few rows in the places shown in the figure. All the formulae will change appropriately. 4.5 Look at figure 1. The five fields are: ‘Name’, ‘Hair Colour’, ‘Eye Colour’, ‘Character’ and ‘Favourite Present’ for each of the eight (fictitious) young ladies. I have reduced the width of column A to 8 characters and increased the width of the last column to 16 characters. 4.5 The records 4.5 The rectangular block of data, B9F16, is the database. It is all text and can be typed in exactly as shown. The rows 9 to 16 are the database records, one record per row and one field per column. To move right from column to column (field to field) you press <tab> and to move left you press <shift-tab>. To move from row to row you can use the return key to move down and the up arrow key to move up. You can use the mouse pointer to move around more quickly; click <select> with the pointer in the cell where you want the cursor or click the mouse on the scroll bars. 4.5 The lookup formulae 4.5 Type Sandy (in text) into cell B7. The only formulae on the sheet are in the cells C7, D7, E7 & F7. Place the cursor in C7, press <f2>. (Edit Expression) to enter a formula into C7. Type in the lookup formula: 4.5 lookup($B7,$B8$B17,C8C17) 4.5 as shown on the screen dump below and then press <return>. When you press <return>, the word ‘Auburn’ will appear in the cell C7. Last month I explained why I included the two blank rows 8 and 17 in the formula. Having entered the formula into C7 replicate it across the row to F7. 4.5 Adding rows 4.5 Perhaps the simplest way of adding a row is to place the cursor somewhere in the middle of the data and press <f7> to insert a row. All the formulae in row 7 will change to match the enlarged database. Type in the data and, if you want to, you can sort the database again on any column or columns. You can also delete a record using F8 to delete a whole row. What you must not do is delete either of the two blank rows which bracket the data (i.e. the ones referenced in the formulae). In figure 1 these are rows 8 and 17. 4.5 An alternative way of entering data is by copying a master row. The master row is shown in figure 1 as row 4. Type in data such as that shown. Now, using the mouse, place the cursor on the 4 of row 4 (i.e. in the margin or ‘border’) and double click. Row 4 will become highlighted (‘marked’ as in ‘marked block’). Now use the mouse to position the cursor anywhere in column A within the data base (A9 to A16), click once and then copy the marked block using <ctrl-BC>. Finally, delete the word “Master:” (using F4) and you can go back to the master row (row 4) and modify the data for the next record. 4.5 Generally, this is a reasonably good method if you have a lot of fields, many of which don’t alter from record to record. It is possible to write a macro (driven from a single function key such as <ctrl-shift-f1> or from say <ctrl-M>) which will mark the master row, copy the record to the database and bring the cursor back to the master row ready for the next data entry. 4.5 A form letter 4.5 Rows 19 to 21 contain a “Form Letter”. A form letter is usually a letter sent to some or all of the people whose names are in the database. Often, the fields are names and addresses, money owed, prizes you might have won, etc, but we have other more attractive characteristics of our eligible young ladies. The letter is typed in with lots of @ characters bracketing cell references from row 7 as: 4.5 @C7@, I thought of you; I remembered your beautiful @E7@ eyes, your @D7@ hair and your @F7@ character. I decided I had to get you @G7@. 4.5 Note that the cell references do not have to appear in the form letter in column (or any other) order; any reference can appear anywhere in the form letter. If you want extra space for a long field then add extra @ signs behind the cell reference such as 4.5 @C7@@@@@@@@@@@@. 4.5 In the screen dump shown in figure 1 I have placed the cursor in row 20 so that you will see the @ cell references. When the cursor is in any other row, the cell references in this form letter change into the values contained in the cells of row 7. So, if Sandy is typed into B7 then all values in row 7 will change to pick up the values from the database (the block B9 to F16), this is followed by the form letter picking up the cell references so that lines 19 to 21 will read: 4.5 Sandy, I thought of you; I remembered your beautiful blue eyes, your auburn hair and your fiery character. I decided I had to get you a sports car. 4.5 Mark rows 19 to 21 and (from the Print menu) Print marked block. The references will be evaluated before printing. You have printed a “Form Letter”! By changing the value in cell B7 to say, Liz, you can send a similar customised letter to Liz! Try it now. 4.5 Labels 4.5 The most usual use of linking a database to a label generating appli cation is to produce address labels. My example isn’t for address labels. It uses the database of E-Y-Ls; perhaps you want to label boxes of mementoes of the times you have spent together − photos, CDs, restaurant bills, etc. Although there are many ways of producing labels from a database, essentially these fall into two classes: (a) using dependent documents or (b) using parameter files. I shall deal with (a) this month and (b) next month. 4.5 Labels using dependent documents 4.5 Before you produce a set of labels, you may want to sort the file so that you can print a selection of the labels rather than all of them. I prefer to have the labels I want to print at the bottom of the database but you might prefer them at the top. You can complicate the formulae in the label generating document and not sort the database but I don’t want to explain how to do that at the moment. 4.5 If you have it on disc, load the file [Label01]. If not then have a look at figure 2 which is a screendump of [Label01] (slightly modified as we’ll see later). For the purpose of this tutorial, I have assumed that you have a single column of labels with each label having two columns. I have also assumed that the vertical distance from the top of one label to the next is ten PipeDream lines. If these values are unsuitable for your labels, you can modify the file accordingly. 4.5 The advantage of using 10 rows per label for this tutorial is that each label starts on a row such as 1, 11, 21, 31, etc and the printing occupies lines 4 to 8, 14 to 18, etc. This makes it a little easier for us ‘denary’ thinkers to see what is going on (eg the first 10 labels use lines 1 to 99 inclusive). 4.5 The cell [Label01]B4 contains the value of the key field for the first label. You can type in ‘Jane’ (the value) or the cell reference [Girls02]B9. The [Girls02] part of this cell reference indicates that the value you want is in the dependent document called [Girls02]. Make sure that [Girls02] is loaded or Pipedream might not find the file. 4.5 The screendump shows the formula for cell [Label01]B5. Press <f2> (Edit Expression) and type the formula in carefully remembering to enter the $ signs where they are shown. When you press <return> the word ‘blond’ will appear in cell B5. 4.5 Mark cells B5 to B8 and replicate with <ctrl-BRD> (Block Replicate Down). The result will be ‘blond’ in all four cells. There are many good ways of modifying the ‘faulty’ formulae but here’s an instructive one. Mark the block B6 to B8 and use <ctrl-ENT> (Edit Number to Text) to convert the formula to (editable) text. Clear the markers with <shift- f3>. Place the cursor in cell [Label01]B6 and use <ctrl-BSE> (Block SEarch) to replace C with D. Repeat this for cells B7 and B8 changing the Cs to Es and Fs respectively. Look a little further down figure 2 and you will see that cells B15 to B18 are in this form. Note that B14 appears in the formulae for the second label where B4 appears in the first − otherwise the formulae are identical. Finally mark the block B5 to B8 and <ctrl-ENT> again to convert the text back to formulae. Leave this block marked. 4.5 Move the cursor to cell [Label01]B14 and type in the formula shown in figure 2. If you have not done so already press F2 to convert the text to a formula. This lookup formula finds Jane in the range B8B17 and then returns the value found in the corresponding place in the range B9B18 (i.e. one record down the database); the value returned is Janet. 4.5 Place the cursor in [Label01]B15 and then <ctrl-BRE> to replicate the block B5B8 to B15B18. During this replication, the B4s will change to B14s but (because of the $s) all the rest of the lookup formulae will be fixed. If you have done all this correctly then you will get, not the formulae shown on the screendump (figure 2), but the second label. 4.5 You can replicate the block A11B20 down the column of labels as far as you wish. Generally the quickest way of doing this is by doubling the block size at every replication − this way it takes 10 replications to produce 1024 labels. Generally it doesn’t matter if the label generator is too long − you can always delete some of it. Save this master label generator. 4.5 Before printing your labels, you can mark the whole [Label01] document and use <ctrl-BSS> (Block SnapShot) to convert all the formulae to values. This snapshotted file is editable as a plain text file so you can delete individual labels, add columns, move blocks around, etc, and see exactly what you have got before finally printing. Particularly with RISC-OS drivers, you can do useful things such as change the font, change the line spacing or change the print scale factor. 4.5 Once you have the [Label01] file, you can use it with databases other than [Girls02]. For example, suppose you want to use it with [Girls03] then you could rename [Girls02] to something else and then rename [Girls03] as [Girls02]. I use a variant of this method. My label file is used with files called [Addresses1], [Addresses2], [Addresses3], etc; I make a copy (using Copy) of the wanted file calling the copy [Addresses]. [Addresses] is the name of my dependent document in my [Label] generator. 4.5 You can use <ctrl-ENT> (Edit Number to Text) on the whole [Label01] file to convert the formulae to text, follow this by <ctrl-BSE> (Block SEarch) to replace [Girls02] with, say, [Girls], finally convert the text back to formulae with <ctrl-ENT>. 4.5 PipeDream User Group 4.5 Quite a few of you have asked me if there is a Pipedream User Group. The answer is “Not at the moment but... ”. Well, do you want one? We’ll see! PipeDream is available for MS-DOS machines, the Z88 (Yippee!) as well as the Archimedes. I do get a little correspondence from MS-DOS and Z88 PipeDream users but most is from Archive readers who (I assume) are primarily Archimedes users. The Pipedream User Group will have a Newsletter and provide some technical support. Write to me (at Abacus Training − address on the back inside cover) if you’re interested in joining. 4.5 In conclusion 4.5 My usual plea. If you write to me with a problem or a hint or something even more substantial then please send an example on disc. That way it is easier for me to understand exactly what it is that’s going wrong (or right) and it makes it easier for me to make the solution available to others. Also a stamp and a label will be appreciated greatly. 4.5 PipeLine discs 4.5 Thanks once again to all who have written to me. The January 1991 PipeLine disc came out on time (posted on 31st January!) but I have had to leave out some sprites and reduce a couple of the large databases to examples in order to fit it all in. I do thank all those who have contributed to that disc as well as all of you who write to me for publication in Archive. I already have some material for the April 1991 PipeLine disc but please do keep it coming in. Even the simplest hints and tips are useful. After all, what seems too simple to be worth a mention to one person may seem an insuperable problem to another. 4.5 I think that, by now, most PipeDream users who are readers of Archive must be subscribers to the quarterly PipeLine discs. Nearly everyone who bought one disc has ‘upgraded’ to an annual subscription. I find this (and the praise) most flattering. If you aren’t a subscriber, why not have a look at the January 1991 PipeLine disc? You too might get ‘hooked’ and take out an annual subscription. Individual discs are £5.00 and an annual subscription is £18.00 from Abacus Training. 4.5 I am particularly pleased when I get letters from correspondents overseas. I’ve received an interesting disc from Ron Pearcy in New Zealand containing eleven applications of PipeDream. It will take me a little while to work through them and decide what can be published in Archive and what on the quarterly PipeLine discs. I wish there were room to mention all of your names but space is limited! A 4.5 4.5 4.5 Figure 1 4.5 4.5 Figure 2 4.5 4.5 6502BBC Emulations 4.5 Brian Cowan 4.5 Before I start, I just want to get clear on some of the terminology. If you talk about the BBC micro, you could be referring to the old BBC computers: the model A, the model B, the Master and the Master Compact − all those which used variants of the 6502 microprocessor. The new BBC Microcomputer, the A3000, is an ARM based machine and in this article I want to talk about ARM emulations of the old 6502 based BBC micros. I will refer to those machines as the “old” BBC microcomputers, but through the odd slip of the tongue (or typing finger) I might call them simply BBC micros. 4.5 Emulation problems 4.5 In general, when one microcomputer imitates the behaviour of another, this emulation must operate at two different levels. Firstly, the CPU of the emulated computer must be simulated. In this case, that means implementing the 6502 instruction set in terms of ARM operations. Secondly there must be a simulation of the hardware and operating system of the emulated computer. 4.5 The first level problem is relatively simple for the present case of 6502 emulation; after all, the ARM instruction set was influenced considerably by that of the 6502. With good CPU implementation, the second level problem should not be too difficult. CPU oriented aspects of the operating system will be relatively unchanged, since the same instructions are simply passed to the CPU emulator. Hooks to hardware are more difficult. Keyboard and screen support are pretty well standard. Additionally, the emulation must connect with such things as the printer port and filing systems. Finally, for BBC emulation, there is the question of the Analogue port, User port and the 1MHz bus. Hardware for this, similar to that on the old BBC computers, is provided on the Acorn I/O podule. Since the hardware is similar, the emulation software support for this will not be too complex. 4.5 Why emulate? 4.5 At present there are Archimedes emulations available for a range of computers including the old BBCs, IBM PC/clones and Apple II. I believe there is an emulator for the Sinclair Spectrum, (I have heard rumours but no concrete facts. Ed.) and I think there is some sort of implemen tation of CP/M. Of course, we are eagerly awaiting a Mac emulator. The Archimedes, with its reduced instruction set CPU is ideally suited for the emulation of other CISC based computers since the complex instruc tions are easily implemented as sequences of simple instructions. To my mind, writing an emulator of another computer is essentially a fun project (although not the sort of thing I would like to do). In other words I would not be inclined to regard it as a terribly serious pastime. 4.5 Software base 4.5 Clearly, when a new computer comes onto the market, there will not be a large range of software products available for it and software avail ability has a large influence on the sales and the popularity of a machine so emulation is an important feature at the launch of a new computer. Acorn regarded the initial consumer base for the Archimedes to be the old BBC fraternity − hence the BBC-like operating system of the Archimedes. Education and hobbyists were the target and many of these would already have made considerable investment in BBC software. It was therefore vital to provide BBC emulation as a means of transferring operation to the new machines. 4.5 Tube emulation 4.5 The old BBC could operate in two different ways. It could perform simply as a microcomputer, using its CPU as any other computer does. However, from the start, the BBC designers were thinking to the future. Using Acorn’s “Tube”, the BBC could be used as a terminal, providing all I/O facilities for another, possibly different, CPU. Second Processor CPUs included the Z80, 80186, 32016 from Acorn and various other models from other suppliers. Acorn also provided 6502-based second processors. Their advantage was to provide more RAM (since now almost the entire 64K address space could drive RAM) and they also ran at a faster clock rate. Much “legally” written software for the BBC could run in the 6502-type second processor including “languages” and other code sitting in the 16K chunk from &8000 upwards. Also, there were special versions of some software written to maximise the available memory space in the second processor. 4.5 The original BBC emulator provided when the Archimedes was released was called 65Arthur. This was an emulation of a BBC running a 65C102 second processor and BBC BASIC IV could be run under this emulation, including programs incorporating 6502 assembler. This means that many BBC programs could run directly and word processors such as View could be used. So, from the start, there was a considerable software base available to Archimedes users and schools could use much of their old BBC software. Later versions of this tube emulation were released under the name 65Tube. 4.5 Host emulation 4.5 Emulation of the BBC microcomputer operating in native mode was provided with the program 65Host. Later versions provided higher degrees of compatibility in such areas as sound production, sideways RAM/ROM implementation etc, etc. However, surprisingly, the one thing which was not provided was an implementation of the old disc filing system, DFS, though now there is a new version of 65Host with even greater compat ibility. This version even comes with extensive documentation and utilities for conversion of old BBC software. (Available until March 31st for the “special price” of £19.95 from Acorn Direct in Wellingborough.) 4.5 Other ideas 4.5 These improvements are all most welcome, although the actual need for 6502BBC emulations is probably decreasing. There are, however, other developments for the BBC emulations which I would like to see. It would be wonderful to have BBC emulations operating as multitasking RISC-OS applications. In other words, one would have one or more windows open, each one emulating a BBC computer. This is probably a long way off. 4.5 More information 4.5 The lack of adequate documentation on the various BBC emulations has always been a problem. David Bower has been investigating the inner workings of these emulations and he has provided us with the following, rather useful information... 4.5 4.5 Notes on BBC Emulators 4.5 David Bower 4.5 The first note is valid for all versions of the !65Host emulator but the remaining sections only apply to the upgraded versions (1.40 and above) which can be found on the RISC-OS Extras Disc or Archive Shareware 17. 4.5 Reclaiming unused memory from ADFS 4.5 The default value of PAGE on !65Host running ADFS is set at &1B00, while a standard BBC Model B running DFS normally puts it at &1900. As the emulator does not simulate shadow RAM, all screen memory is taken out of the 32K available. If you have an application using ‘high-resolution’ graphics modes 0, 1 or 2 which occupy 20K, then memory-space for your program and variables can become very tight. The memory area between &1100 and PAGE is used by the filing system to provide a read/write buffer for each open disc file. If your application doesn’t require disc access, then PAGE can usually be lowered to &1100 without any ill effects. (Simply type PAGE=&1100 at the > prompt after entering the emulator.) Other programs may need a higher value to function correctly. Some experimentation is called for here but you can try &1300 as a starting point. Gaining up to 2.5K of memory from one statement must be a good trade-off! 4.5 Some older DFS software breaches Acorn’s guidelines and assumes that PAGE resides at &1900. In this case simply reset PAGE to this value. 4.5 Loading and activating ROM images 4.5 The User Guide instructions for ‘caching’ BBC ROM images are rather unclear. A simpler way to use these images is to load them into (emulated) sideways RAM after the emulator has initialised. There is a documented option in the !Run file for setting up the emulator with four banks of sideways RAM (as in the Master 128) and you can then *SRLOAD the desired images from disc. There is no “I” option for activating the ROM image automatically, but simply hitting the break key to re- initialise the emulator does the job. 4.5 Emulator Compatible BBC ROMs 4.5 The following language ROM images all appear to function correctly, though I must emphasize that I have only made cursory checks rather than performing exhaustive tests on all features. 4.5 Language Vers’n Source Tube compatible 4.5 BCPL 7.00 Acorn Y 4.5 C 1.50 Beebug N (2 ROMS) 4.5 COMAL 1.00 Acorn Y 4.5 FORTH-83 1.00 Skywave Y 4.5 LISP 1.00 Acorn Y 4.5 Logo 1.00 Logotron Y 4.5 Prolog 3.10 Acorn Y 4.5 ISO-Pascal 1.00 Acorn Y (Hi version) 4.5 Pascal 2.10 Oxford N 4.5 XBASIC B.9 D. Bower N 4.5 BASIC 40 Acorn Y 4.5 (I used 65Tube version 0.64 for compatibility tests.) 4.5 65C12 Instruction Set Compatibility 4.5 The compatibility of BASIC40 − the Master Compact version which is the fastest 8-bit BBC BASIC and the most accurate for floating-point and transcendental computations − came as a complete surprise. 4.5 It demonstrates that the newer versions of the !65Host emulator support not only the 6502 instruction set but also the extra instructions and addressing modes found on the 65C12 CPU which is used on Master series machines. If you run BASIC40 − selected by *FX142,x where x is the image ROM slot as *BASIC simply re-selects the cached BASIC2 − then the additional instructions will be assembled correctly. I have not seen this feature documented previously. A 4.5 4.5 HU-Prolog 4.5 Chris Williamson 4.5 In July 1989, I wrote a review of Acorn’s Prolog System X. I concluded that article by saying that the Acorn product was very expensive for what it provided. In particular, System X did not provide the debugging facilities documented in the standard text on Prolog by Clocksin and Mellish. My other comment related to the inability of the system to produce stand-alone code. 4.5 Given the price of the Acorn system, (and the fact that it has been discontinued − see below Ed.) it is very pleasing to be able to report on an addition to the NCS Careware compilation, Careware Nº12. Andrew Stevens, a professional AI/computer science worker, has ported HU-Prolog for RISC-OS. HU-Prolog, or Humboldt University Prolog, was written by C.Horn, M. Dziadzka and M.Horn at the Department of Mathematics, Humboldt University in East Berlin. HU-Prolog is an interpreted Prolog and does not provide any compiling facilities. Historically, Prolog systems have tended to be interpreted rather than compiled. This is in keeping with their interactive nature. 4.5 I have not had a great deal of time in which to investigate the RISC-OS version of HU-Prolog. However, what work I have done with it does confirm the claim that it is an almost 100% implementation of the Edinburgh syntax as documented by Clocksin and Mellish. As yet I have not had any major problems, though there is one area of the syntax not covered. HU-Prolog does not implement the Prolog grammar rules (definite clause grammars). These are of most interest to people involved in natural language processing. The omission of this facility is not a great loss, as the grammar rules just provide a shorthand notation for something that can still be coded using the normal Prolog rules. 4.5 My review of the Acorn system included the results of a performance comparison between System X and DECsystem-10 Prolog. The DEC-10 is a medium size mainframe dating from the 1970‘s. The performance test was based on a plan generating program. The program could operate a depth or breadth first search to produce the plan. In the case of this example, the program was asked to produce a plan to solve the Towers of Hanoi problem. The results obtained are shown below, and are now extended to include HU-Prolog. 4.5 HU-Prolog Acorn Sys-X DECsys-10 4.5 Breadth first 101.95 53.81 13.32 4.5 Depth first 61.83 27.78 6.73 4.5 All the results are shown in seconds. 4.5 After the comments I made regarding the lack of debugging facilities on the Acorn system, I am happy to say that these facilities are present on the HU-Prolog system. This does have to be qualified though. The bugs section of the few pages of machine readable documentation refers to the debuggers handling of backtracking. A simple test, on the lines of the example in the debugging chapter of C & M, showed that the debugger did not perform exactly as would be expected. The output during the test did not conform to the tracing model, but did appear to represent an understandable sequence of events with respect to the control flow. I have not had time to pursue this area of investigation any further. 4.5 A few other comments may be in order prior to concluding. The documenta tion provided is a little scanty, though Andrew states that he is happy to answer queries by paper or electronic mail. The system will run on a 1 Mbyte machine. I ran it on an A310 from the command line prompt. The documentation does suggest that HU-Prolog could be run from an !Edit task window. After attempting to do this with various configurations, I can only conclude that more than 1 Mbyte is required if the task window is to be used on the DeskTop. Like the Acorn System X, a number of extensions have been provided to the language. The documentation for these is in some cases a little terse. The timer function used in the example program provided with the system is not documented at all. 4.5 To sum up then, the main points appear to be positive. First, compare the price of a Careware disc against the price Acorn are asking for its system. I shall leave you to draw your own conclusions on that one. Price of course is not everything. While HU-Prolog does not appear to match the speed of the Acorn system, it is still more than adequate for most tasks. It does implement a usable set of debugging functions; something that Acorn could not provide. In common with System X, HU- Prolog does not implement a stand alone program facility. Unlike the Acorn system, which has both a compiler and an interpreter, HU-Prolog only has an interpreter and so could not readily provide this feature. Finally, while the system is not in any way guaranteed, it is being used by Andrew and his colleagues in a professional environment and, as such, must meet a certain level of serviceability. A 4.5 (The validity of this review has been confused a little by the fact that Acorn have decided that their Prolog System-X is no longer available. (Neither are Lisp, Logistix or Zarch.) If anyone has a copy of any of these pieces of software and would be willing to give it to our charity sale, do send it in to the Archive office so that others who want it can get hold of it. If you would prefer to sell this or any software, feel free to use our Small Ads section − there’s no charge. Just send in the text on paper or on disc but please note the use of the word “small”! Ed.) A 4.5 4.5 Language Column 4.5 David Wild 4.5 I have recently received a letter from a reader asking me to tell him whether he should buy Release 3 of Acorn’s ‘C’ or the Beebug version. As I am not a ‘C’ programmer, I am not competent to make any recommendation but I think that it would be dangerous for me to do so in any case. (Does anyone have experience of both that they could share with us? Ed.) 4.5 I can, for instance, tell you why I think that Acorn’s version of Pascal is still worth buying, even though it is dearer than Cambridge Pascal − but it would still be up to you to make the final decision. All such decisions are to do with the balance of advantage, with all programs having strong and weak points. Only you can decide which of the various points are relevant to your way of working. 4.5 Just occasionally during my micro-computing career I have come across a program which would be too expensive even if they gave it to you but so far, fortunately, none of these have been for the Archimedes. (Some of the games which re-configure your machine and then don’t allow you to quit come fairly close!) 4.5 What you must do is to determine exactly what you need from a compiler and then create a check list for the available compilers. You can then tick off against your various points and see how they measure up. I would suggest that price should be relatively unimportant in this checking. If you are going to do a lot of serious programming you need to get the right compiler for your needs and if it means paying a little bit extra then you will have to do it. This applies even in the PC world where prices range from about £50 to more than £500. If the £500 compiler actually lets you write more programs in the next two years the extra money may be very well spent, whereas it would be gross extrava gance if you only wanted to write one program anyway. 4.5 Pascal compilation 4.5 Since my previous article, I have received a new version of the Pascal compiler module from David Pilling. This allows for the use of “via” files, rather than libraries, to specify the files containing modules to be linked. This means that you don’t need any software to turn your “aof” files into libraries, although libraries can still be used if you wish. 4.5 Using this compiler module means that compilation with the Acorn compiler and linker is just as easy as using the Cambridge Pascal method while still retaining the advantages of separate compilation. It does also multi-task, although other processes slow down while the compiler is active. 4.5 David Pilling’s programs are extremely good value, and I don’t really understand how he manages to produce them at the price. If you are a serious Pascal programmer the spending of £5.99 on this program will repay itself many times over. 4.5 Scheme 4.5 In my review of Scheme, I mentioned it as an alternative to Acorn’s Lisp − although, once again, that program does still have some advantages. When I was talking to a reader recently I mentioned Scheme and he said “Oh! but I’m not into artificial intelligence”. Because Lisp has strong associations with AI, people are tempted to forget that it does have other uses. (Sadly, Acorn have removed Lisp (and Prolog X, Logistix & Zarch) from their price list. If you have superfluous copies, why not send them in to our charity sale? Thanks, Ed.) 4.5 One which could well be of value in education, especially at the price of £37.50, is the ability to write programs to do algebraic manipula tion. Many “maths” programs actually deal with the evaluation of formulae and produce numeric answers, but in Lisp you can actually write functions to add 3x2 + 5x + 4 to 9x2 − 6x − 3 and get another quadratic equation as a result. This sort of thing goes a long way in reinforcing students’ understanding of the underlying processes. A 4.5 4.5 Low Cost Multi-Media 4.5 Ian Lynch 4.5 In last month’s column, I gave an outline of some of the possibilities in the developing field of multimedia. I now have a copy of Genesis 2, but rather than a straight review, I will be discussing several aspects of the software over a period of time. Hopefully, several of you will produce Genesis 2 applications and if there is enough interest, I will establish a Genesis 2 applications library, but more of this later. Genesis 2 is one of the most versatile pieces of software to emerge on the Archimedes and is a product of Software Solutions (now Oak Solutions after their merger with Oak Computers). This merger seems to me significant in that Oak are experts in storage technology and Software Solutions in the software technology which will enable multimedia to develop on the Archimedes perhaps in a more innovative way than it is on other platforms and almost certainly at lower cost. Time will no doubt tell. 4.5 4.5 Genesis 1 4.5 Genesis 1 has been available for a year now and is a part of the A3000 and A420 Learning Curves. It enables arbitrary links to be made between pages which can have frames containing !Maestro files, text, graphics or !Euclid animations. The beauty of Genesis 1 is that it also allows any application to be dropped into a frame and forms an effective extension to the RISC-OS desktop for presenting information in a variety of ways. I used it for my presentation of PC-Emulation and other operating systems during the New Horizons seminars at the Computer Shopper Show. Other examples, are the construction of a musical data base with examples of the composer’s work or a simple card index. Since pages can be printed, Genesis 1 also provides the facilities for simple DTP and its frame nature is very similar to that used by Ovation and Impression. 4.5 Genesis 1 allows the user to create applications which run from the RISC-OS desktop, but there are some restrictions which limit the scope of the applications. One major problem is that Genesis 1 applications take up a lot of disc space and consist of hundreds of files each containing information about the content of the frames on each page. This makes copying and distributing large applications very tedious. Using !Spark and !Sparkplug can help, but compression and decompression of the files is also relatively slow. Another restriction is that it is not easily possible to make conditional events in Genesis 1. This means, for example, that the user has to double click on a music file in order to play it rather than the application playing the music automatically if, say, a page is opened. 4.5 Genesis 2 4.5 Many of these restrictions are overcome or reduced in Genesis 2 and the software also allows some additional data types, most notably sound samples from !Armadeus. These samples are buffered from disc so that they do not take up more than 16K of memory. File compression has also been used to help save disc space and Genesis 2 applications can take up a lot less than half the space of Genesis 1 applications depending on the data types involved. 4.5 Perhaps the most exciting addition to Genesis 2 is its ability to create the dialogue boxes and conditional events which characterise RISC-OS desktop applications. What this means is that Genesis 2 can be used to generate complete desktop applications without the need to know C, BASIC or any other programming languages. However, some knowledge of program ming is an obvious advantage. 4.5 Genesis generates its own script language which can be edited to provide further flexibility. It should be possible to write and debug an application in perhaps a tenth of the time that it would take to program it in BASIC and probably a lot less than this in many cases. The only catch is that applications will tend to be longer than those written (efficiently) in BASIC and will execute relatively slowly in some parts. Obviously, Computer Concepts would not write a DTP application using Genesis 2, (they still use assembler for speed and compactness − what patience!) but there is a very acceptable calculator and a simple spreadsheet with graph drawing application on the examples disc which comes with the package to demonstrate the application generation potential of Genesis 2. 4.5 I can see enormous potential for those who would like to write appli cations for computer aided learning which require audio and good quality graphics, but where speed is not a critical factor. In fact, graphics animations through !Euclid will be possible so the speed restrictions are not necessarily associated with this aspect of an application, though space invader type games would be a problem. 4.5 Genesis 2 also provides an ideal tool for a team approach since the !Euclid expert can produce the film animation, the music expert the Maestro file, the graphics expert the pictures and the literary genius the text. The machine code programmer can do that tricky bit that needed more speed and the software product manager can make sure the whole thing comes together properly. It does seem likely that home users and those in the education world will be able to write their own software vastly increasing the number of RISC-OS applications available. Perhaps we could have a joint Archive effort with several people with different interests contributing to a collective masterpiece which could be sold for charity! (Anyone interested should write to Ian c/o the Archive office. Ed.) 4.5 Other products 4.5 There are some other developments in multi-media on the Archimedes in addition to Genesis 2 and I will endeavour to keep a track of these. As a matter of interest, I have looked at Linkway on PCs and Genesis 2 has several major advantages, most notably ease of use. Children, in particular, seem to find it a lot easier to be creative using Genesis than they do using Linkway. Part of this is as much due to features of RISC-OS such as direct in-memory transfer as it is to do with Genesis but, as with most RISC-OS applications, it is the combination of ARM speed and RISC-OS which enable the innovative programmer to produce applications which are both powerful and easy to use. 4.5 A more powerful tool than Linkway, called Authorware on the Macintosh is very impressive, being used to author computer based training appli cations in industry. This is being ported to PCs though it will perform very poorly on anything less than a 286. Another factor is a price tag of £5,000 − who said that Archimedes software is too expensive? − but the company using it reckoned that it saved them more than this much in the first application they produced because it was so much quicker than writing in Pascal. I recently had a ‘phone call from Peter Deutekom in Holland where the government flying school are using Archimedes and their own software coupled with Wildvision equipment to make instruc tional videos. A logical progression could be into interactive learning systems. If you know of something interesting on any of the platforms, drop me a line. 4.5 It will take me some time to become familiar with all the subtleties of writing Genesis 2 applications, but over the next few months, I hope to generate some examples so we can all learn together. I will be concen trating on Genesis 2, but some things will be common to Genesis 1. If you can afford it and would like to get into writing your own appli cations, the upgrade is well worthwhile. In fact, if you can only afford one major software application, Genesis 2, like !Pipedream is worthy of consideration since it can provide DTP, database, spreadsheet and applications generation. Genesis 2 can also access CD-ROM and Laser Vision discs, so if you have the funds available for these rather expensive hardware devices, Genesis 2 is almost essential if you want to make best use of them. ARM3 also makes a significant difference to screen drawing particularly when using outline fonts so it is fair to say that Genesis 2 will make good use of any resources you have available at the same time as working on a single Mb ARM 2 without a hard disc. 4.5 Next month, I will go through the creation of a simple application. In the meantime, do write and let me know what you would like to see in later columns. A 4.5 4.5 Tracker 4.5 Mark Drayton 4.5 This is a review of the !Tracker application, programmed by F. Mercier for the Serial Port, which costs £49.95 (or £46 through Archive). For those of you who are not familiar with the Soundtracker idea, I refer you to Toby Simpson’s excellent articles in Archive 3.8 and 3.11. They explain with clarity the basic mechanics behind a ‘Soundtracker’ tune. 4.5 The !Tracker application allows you to create the Soundtracker tunes for yourself, using samples from other tunes or by using samples from software packages such as Armadeus. The application installs itself on the icon bar, and is semi RISC-OS compatible, as it occupies the whole of the machine while running, but will return to the desktop with everything intact. !Tracker grabs a hefty 640K when installed in order to cope with a tune with many samples, but this may be a bit too cautious, and can be changed by altering the !Run file within the !Tracker directory. 4.5 The package comes with four discs, one containing the main programs (including !Jukebox, a program which will simply play the tunes using the existing public domain play module), another containing some demonstration tunes, and two others containing samples which can be used to create tunes for yourself. The manual I got was a rather hurried affair, due to their rush to get the program ready for release for the Acorn User Show. However, it was fairly clear and informative but I expect a newer version has now been written. An upgraded version of the original program is now available which incorporates midi compatibility, but which offers only a slight improvement and still contains a few of the original bugs. 4.5 Within the program, the display shows the construction of each tune clearly, with all the information on each sample available. There are eight possible voices, each with a slider for controllable stereo positions, but there is rarely the need for more than four. A very impressive imitation spectrum analyser gives something for your eyes to feast on while your ears enjoy the music. There are also twelve panel type buttons, (selectable with the mouse), such as play, stop etc., and also a record facility which allows you to ‘play’ the music using the keyboard. The program records the values of the play rate in a pattern which you can then alter to perfection. An options button brings up a display which gives the following selections: internal speakers on/off; number of voices; sample format (for compatibility with samplers); pattern display (scrolling / half scroll / no scroll); and Midi status / channel. 4.5 The package is well presented, with attractive features such as a play clock and a scrolling message box. In my experience, The Serial Port are very courteous and helpful, and provide an excellent back up service. The library of Soundtrackers built up by some public domain libraries is huge, and I myself have eight discs full of tunes selected from a much larger number. They are all public domain, so if anyone is interested in finding out what the Archimedes sound system is capable of, or simply wants more tunes to play can write to me at 38 Baunton, Cirencester, Glos. Gl7 7BB. Please send me a disc to put them on, and I would appreciate a small fee of £1 per disc to ensure a snappy reply!! 4.5 It is my opinion that although this system originated on the Amiga, (shudder), this is by far the best music software available for the Archimedes/A3000, making Maestro look positively agricultural in comparison. The price is perhaps a little high, but for anyone who is at all interested in music on the Archimedes, this is a ‘must’. A 4.5 4.5 4.5 4.5 Using the PC Emulator − Part 7 4.5 Richard Forster 4.5 If batch files were limited to just what we discussed last time, this would indeed be very limiting. Fortunately there are two other things they can do, which gives them a reasonable amount of power − you can pass parameters to them and they have a host of special commands. 4.5 Many commands have syntaxes which require extra data. For example, when using the COPY command, we have to add the name of the file being copied, and where it is being copied to. batch files can take these extra details by means of the % sign and a digit from 1 to 9. These represent the detail on the command line in the position referred to by the digit. So if our command line happened to be: 4.5 BFILE ONE TWO FOUR 4.5 Then occurrences of %1, %2 and %3 in the batch file, would be taken as “ONE”, “TWO” and “FOUR” respectively. If the program asks for a parameter which is not in the command line (for example asking for %4 in the above situation) then the batch file will presume this parameter to be a blank. This may or may not create an error and, because of this, you should be careful to watch what you type, or executing the file may have an unexpected result. 4.5 %0 is a special parameter. When it occurs in a program, it stands for the program’s actual name. In the above example %0 would be BFILE. Another special parameter command allowed in batch files is SHIFT. Normally you can only have 9 parameters (%1-%9), and this is generally enough, but you may need more. Every time the command SHIFT is executed, the command after %9 on the command line becomes %9, and %9 becomes %8 etc. You must remember if using this command that after the first SHIFT %0 will be lost. 4.5 A new command − MOVE 4.5 A useful command which is not included with MSDOS is the move command, and so with the use of batch files we shall make one. Basically, a move command will move the specified command from A to B, leaving no copy of it at A (unlike the copy command). Using edlin to create the file MOVE.BAT, put in the following data: 4.5 COPY %1 %2 4.5 DEL %1 4.5 So to use the command, you simply type in MOVE followed first by the original name of file, and then the new location of the file, just as if you were using the copy command. If you typed in: 4.5 MOVE C:\BITOF.TXT C:\STORE 4.5 The file BITOF.TXT would be moved into the directory STORE (presuming it existed first of course). The actual batch file would effectively be executing: 4.5 COPY C:\BITOF.TXT C:\STORE 4.5 DEL C:\BITOF.TXT 4.5 This command has some hidden power, and also some hidden danger. Both are connected to the same thing, namely what would happen if the second parameter was omitted. What the batch file would then do, would be to copy the file into the current directory, and then delete the old copy of it. This is fine unless the file being copied was already in the current directory, where it will be deleted. Forgetting both parameters will simply give a couple of “Invalid number of parameters” errors when the relative lines attempt to run. 4.5 To echo or not to echo 4.5 The simplest, and in many cases the most useful, of the batch commands is ECHO. In has two uses, both of them controlling output to the screen from a batch file. Normally when a batch file is run it displays each line as it executes it (as you may have noticed when using the move command). This is often required so that the user can see what is happening, but often it is unnecessary. By executing the command ECHO OFF at the start of a batch file these line are not printed to the screen. 4.5 A file with a first line of ECHO OFF will print that command to the screen but none of the subsequent lines. It can of course be turned off at any point in the batch files execution, with the command ECHO ON. Switching echo off only stops the command to be executed being displayed − messages from MS-DOS will still be printed. If we added ECHO OFF to the first line of our move file (something I do not suggest, because in its present state, the user can escape by pressing <ctrl-C> if he notices something is going wrong), although we would not have seen the COPY commands being executed, we would have seen the messages line “1 file(s) copied”. 4.5 Command messages in batch files can still be redirected to other sources instead of the screen by using the > symbol. There is a special place we can direct these messages to if we do not want them at all, and this is nul:. If we had the line: 4.5 COPY %1 %2 >nul: 4.5 in our batch file, we would not get the message that the file had been copied. Whether or not we saw the command would depend on whether echo was on or off. MS-DOS being an intelligent beast at times, will still send us any important error messages. 4.5 Another use of ECHO is to send a message to the screen. When it is not followed by either ON of OFF, this is exactly what it does. It is of slightly more use when echo has previously been turned off, because otherwise the message is effectively repeated. For example, you would see: 4.5 Echo move program running . . . 4.5 move program running . . . 4.5 Whereas with echo off you would simply see: 4.5 move program running . . . 4.5 If echo is on, it is far better to use the REM command rather than the ECHO command. As with BASIC, a REM command is simply ignored by the computer and so, with echo on, it is printed on the screen and, as it does nothing, the computer will move on to the next command. 4.5 The second really useful batch command is PAUSE. When the computer comes across this in a batch file it pauses, prints the message “Strike a key when ready . . .” and then waits for a key to be pressed before continuing. If you use this command, but do not want the prompting message to appear, use: 4.5 PAUSE >nul: 4.5 This is of use if you used echo to print a prompting message more suitable to the situation. 4.5 To show the use of ECHO and PAUSE we shall now update the move command so that it is more user-friendly and easier to stop if something is going wrong. You could use edlin to edit the old program, but because it was so small it is probably easier to delete the old move.bat file and start anew. When you are ready, enter the following program: 4.5 ECHO OFF 4.5 COPY %1 %2 >nul: 4.5 ECHO %1 has been copied as %2 4.5 ECHO About to delete old file 4.5 PAUSE 4.5 DEL %1 4.5 By adding the messages and the pause you can now see if the file has been copied successfully and, if so, just press a key to delete the old part. If you notice that something has gone wrong you can simply press <ctrl-C> to abort. The above example also demonstrates the fact that you can put %1-%9 in an echo message. 4.5 IF, GOTO and FOR 4.5 The final three commands for batch files are used less often and make it far more like a small programming language. The commands IF, GOTO and FOR allow conditional execution, skipping of steps and repetition. Most batch files simply run from start to finish, executing every line, and these commands are only really used in more complicated batch files. 4.5 IF checks for certain conditions, and if they exist will execute a certain command line. IF NOT can also be used, and this will execute the command line if the condition is not met. The actual conditions are of three types − strings being equal, errors having occurred, and the existence of files. 4.5 The string comparison compares two pieces of text between quotation marks, and checks whether they are equal. If a parameter occurs in one of the strings (e.g. “%1”) then it is replaced with the string it actually represents. Between the two strings there must be two = signs. If, for some reason, we wanted to know when we were moving our move program, we could add the line: 4.5 if “%1”==“move.bat” echo Moving 4.5 the move program! 4.5 If we entered move.bat as our first parameter, the computer would print “Moving the move program!” to the screen. When a parameter occurs in a string but is not used, it is replaced by a blank (not a space, because spaces, equal signs, commas and semicolons are not allowed in these strings). So if we wanted to check that a second parameter had been entered we could use: 4.5 if “%2”==“” echo No second 4.5 parameter! 4.5 IF can also check whether an error has occurred. This is because many of the MS-DOS commands send numbers back to MS-DOS on their completion (this is how it knows when to print a special error message, and why these messages are printed even when the command’s output is going to a file or nul:). This number is a 0 if no error occurred, and a positive integer if an error occurred. 4.5 IF can check this using the extra command ERRORLEVEL followed by a number. If the number returned to MS-DOS was equal or higher than this number, the command line will be executed. So, if we wanted to print an error message when part of our program went wrong, we could use a line similar to: 4.5 if errorlevel 1 echo AN ERROR 4.5 HAS OCCURRED! 4.5 If for some reason we wanted to indicate everything was running fine, we could use a line like: 4.5 if not errorlevel 1 echo 4.5 EVERYTHING IS A-OKAY. 4.5 Finally, we can use the word EXIST and a file name after IF, to see whether a certain file exists. More often than not, this command is used with IF NOT to see if a file does not exist. In our move program it could be useful to know if the file we were trying to copy did not exist, and so we could add a line: 4.5 if not exist %1 echo File %1 4.5 does not exist! 4.5 The problem with IF so far is that it will only execute one line. By using the GOTO statement we can skip to an area of the program, and execute as many as we want to. If you have used GOTO in BASIC you may be wondering how to use it as our batch files have no line numbers (the ones in edlin are for reference only.) The answer is by using labels. 4.5 Using labels 4.5 A label in a batch file is a semicolon followed by a name. If a batch file comes across a label when running, it ignores it. By specifying the label’s name (ignoring the semicolon), after a goto statement you can jump through the program to that label and continue execution from there. We can thus modify our move program to jump to the end when we ask it to copy a non-existent file. Using edlin to edit the program, change it so that it looks like this: 4.5 ECHO OFF 4.5 if not exist %1 goto nf 4.5 COPY %1 %2 >nul: 4.5 ECHO %1 has been copied as %2 4.5 ECHO About to delete old file 4.5 PAUSE 4.5 DEL %1 4.5 goto end 4.5 :nf 4.5 ECHO The file you want to move 4.5 does not exist! 4.5 :end 4.5 As you can see, GOTO is not just limited to being used after an IF statement. As an exercise, try changing the program so that it tells the user if they have forgotten to enter any parameters what the syntax is. 4.5 Finally, for this month, we come to the FOR command. For allows you to repeat a command on various files. If you had five text files on a disc and wanted to view them all using the type command, this is the best way of doing it. The actual command you would use is: 4.5 for %%a in (*.TXT) do type %%a 4.5 The %%a is the variable name used by FOR, and can be any letter preceded by double percentages. The item in brackets is the set of files which the command will be executed on (in this case all files with the ending TXT. The final bit, type %%a, is simply the command. In turn, each file ending TXT will become %%a and so it will type all the files. The actual syntax of command is: for (variable) in (set of files) do (command) (variable). 4.5 The * used above is a wildcard, and they are worth a brief mention. Wildcards, as the name suggests, can stand for anything. There are two type in MS-DOS, the asterisk (*) which stands for any number of characters, and the question mark (?) which stands for a single character. So to delete all the files in a directory with the ending FUF you would type in: 4.5 DEL *.FUF 4.5 and to delete all files with an ending which starts and ends with F you would type in: 4.5 DEL *.F?F 4.5 That’s about all for this month. As a final note, several programs are available for PC’s, many public domain, which allow enhanced batch files − allowing user input while running etc. A 4.5 4.5 4.5 Impression II in Context 4.5 Stuart Bell 4.5 In Archive 1.1, October 1987(!), Paul reported, “Computer Concepts’ DTP Package, as yet un-named, sounds more impressive than the DTP system I’m using to prepare this magazine.... ” The description that followed painted a remarkably accurate picture of what Impression would even tually look like and concluded, “I can’t wait, but I’m going to have to as it is scheduled for “Early 1988”. It was not until late ’89 that Impression finally saw the light of day, preceded by Acorn DTP, and followed by Beebug’s Ovation. Tempest is due out any time and the original Impression has been followed by a significantly more powerful Impression II and a more basic, yet still very useful, Impression Junior. 4.5 Whilst Impression II may be the all-singing all-dancing DTP package for the Archimedes and A3000 users, very few of us will have widespread experience of DTP on other machines. Paul started Archive on a Mac (I trust that he is Archimedes-based by now!), (Sure am! Ed.) and Ian Lynch, the original DTP column editor, admitted to experience of Pagemaker on 386-based PCs. Where then does Impression II fit into the wider world of Mac and PC-based DTP? That’s the aim of this article – to put Impression II in context. 4.5 First, let me admit that my experience of other DTP is very limited. It’s because I was so impressed by Impression that I wanted to find out if it’s as amazing as I thought. The October 1990 edition of Byte provides the background – an in-depth review of seven high-end DTP packages for the Mac and PCs entitled. “Is the Typesetter Obsolete?” distinguishes five page-layout packages from two document publishing programs. The former group take prepared material produced on word- processing and graphics packages, and enable the user to produce well laid-out brochures, leaflets and books. If any complex editing is required, the WP must be loaded and the text changed before being reloaded back into the layout program. Thus, such well-known packages as Venturer Publisher and Aldus Pagemaker 3.01 on a PC lack simple editing functions like search-and-replace and a spelling checker. Similarly, Quark XPress 2.12 on a Mac lacks Index and Contents generation, whilst Letraset DesignStudio 1.01 (again on a Mac) won’t handle sub- or super- scripts. 4.5 Producing lists of missing features is, in itself, a futile exercise – such a list could, and indeed will be, produced for Impression II. What they do illustrate, however, is that Impression II should be compared with the second group reviewed, the document publishing programs Frame Technology Framemaker 2.1 (tested on a Mac but available for use with Unix), and Interleaf Publisher 3.0 (on a PC). Pretty soon, however, it becomes clear that with the latter having so many deficiencies relative to Impression II (maximum point size 72, no configurable rulers, no master pages, no fractional point sizes and no scaled screen views, etc. etc.), the real “head-to-head” encounter that will set Impression II in a wider context is a comparison with Framemaker 2.1 on a Mac. So, here goes... 4.5 Hardware platforms 4.5 The minimum hardware requirement for Framemaker is a Mac SE with 2Mb RAM, although it was tested by Byte on a Mac IIfx with 4Mb, a 13 inch AppleColor display, and an 8 − 24 Display Card. Both configurations require an Apple Laserwriter IINT. My local Apple dealer tells me that the minimum set-up – the SE 30 is the only current SE model, but a 68030 is probably advisable for DTP in any case – comes in at about £6,000. The top end Mac system works out at a mighty £9,500 inc. VAT. The new range of lower-priced Macs will have changed things somewhat, but I wouldn’t try serious DTP on the 68000-based Mac Classic. 4.5 Equivalent Archimedes packages might be first an A440 equivalent with mono screen, and CC’s Laser Direct Printer. Archive VAT-inclusive prices total £3150 including Impression II. The top-end system (say a 540 and Taxan 795 multi-sync, even with the HiRes version of Laser Direct) only manages to reach £5600. PC-based systems are cheaper but, to match a 540, a fast 386 system with EDSI or SCSI discs, Super VGA display and a Postscript printer will be needed. Machines like that with recognisable names (Tandon, Epson, etc) come in at about £3.5K plus printer and software. As for ’486s... 4.5 Whilst comparing the cost of hardware platforms, we should remember that Impression will work quite adequately on a 1Mb system and a single floppy, but runs very nicely on an A3000 with 2Mb, Oak’s new low-cost 20MB SCSI disc and the Hewlett Packard DJ500 ink-jet printer. I make that £1840 with a medium resolution colour screen. 4.5 Apparently, that suggests ‘Round 1’ to Impression. The problem is, of course, that if people already have sufficiently powerful Macs or PC’s, then the cost is much less. What we are trying to do is evaluate Impression in a wider context, not expecting that people will ditch their PC’s just because of Impression. 4.5 Page layout 4.5 Even looking across all the seven packages which Byte tested, the page layout facilities of Impression compare well. It lacks a grid system but the page-ruler facility (new to Impression II) arguably provides a similar tool. The Master Page capabilities are notable, especially now that chapters with pairs of master pages can start (as they usually should) with the right-hand master. Some layout packages offer a Pasteboard (a Clipboard on which elements can be viewed and moved) to hold material which has yet to be added to the current page. Again, Impression’s ability to have multiple files open (not found on most pure DTP programs), permitting the use of a temporary scratchpad file, provides a comparable facility. 4.5 Typography 4.5 Whilst older DTP packages limit the precision with which point-sizes can be defined, Impression at least matches newer systems. Its ‘lock to linespace grid’ is comparable to FrameMaker’s vertical justification, and the ‘Keep together’ style attribute provides some of the functional ity of proper control of ‘widows and orphans’ (single lines of text at the top and bottom of pages). It does, however, lack some of the sophistication of hyphenation and justification algorithms provided by DesignStudio or Quark Xpress to emulate traditional typesetting niceties. 4.5 It is in the provision of tracking that we encounter the first arguable weakness in Impression. This term describes the amount of horizontal space within text. Generally, the larger the text size, the less space (proportionally) is required to make it readable. Some packages, such as PageMaker, allow the use of different levels of tracking – from very loose (letters spaced) to very tight (letters very close together). If a line will not quite fit where it is required, tightening the tracking can be very useful, as it can be on a larger scale with slightly over- long material. Impression implements an approximation to this with the ‘font aspect ratio’ figure, the problem being that this also changes the sizes of the characters, as well as the space between them. So, variable tracking starts my wish-list for Impression III. 4.5 When the space between letters is reduced to the point at which they start to overlap (e.g. a capital V next to a capital A), this is termed kerning. On many specialist typesetting systems, and Letraset’s DesignStudio and Quark’s XPress, for each font there is a kerning table which lists the optimum spacing for every possible pair of letters, or at least those pairs, like A and V, which must be kerned if they are to look ‘right’. Impression’s ability manually to control kerning to one thousandth of an em is matched only by DesignStudio. Framemaker manages only 0.1 em. However, there are no kerning tables – every AV pair must be manually kerned – which is a minor inconvenience, rather than a major shortcoming. 4.5 Text handling 4.5 As we noted in the introduction, Impression’s ability to manipulate text sets it apart from page layout packages. Only Framemaker matches it. 4.5 Views and printing 4.5 Impression’s capability of displaying pages at virtually any magnifi cation, and with text always optimally free of jagged edges, is a tribute as much to Acorn’s Font Manager as to Computer Concepts’ programming. Nevertheless, it bears repeating that the quality of screen text that Archimedes users take for granted is unmatched by any PC and only now is about to be emulated by Apple’s latest system software. If you don’t believe me, get a PC DTP user to give you a 400% blow-up and see those ‘jaggies’! (Only FrameMaker could manage 800%). 4.5 Most layout packages are pretty competent at printing out their results. With Apple having failed to update its dot-matrix ImageWriters for years, Postscript laser printers are the only (expensive) option. PC packages will drive HP LaserJets (and compatibles), but the high-end products favour Postscript. In any case, if a final document is to be properly type-set, then the ability to produce Postscript files is essential. 4.5 Impression itself provides all that might be expected. On cheap printers, like HP’s DeskJet, it is slow but, in my personal experience people just don’t believe what a £350 printer has produced, even if you can make a cup of coffee whilst it prints a page! Its draft printing facility attempts to overcome the speed problem, but is rather limited. The output of the text story for later printing can be a better solution. 4.5 The one aspect of Impression discussed in this article of which I do not have experience is its use with the Laser Direct and Arc Laser. Both printers, which have been described in Archive, provide fast output at relatively low cost by directly connecting the printing engine to a podule in the host computer. The Hi-Res version of the former works at up to 600 dpi – not up to the standard of commercial typesetting, but visibly better than run-of-the-mill 300 dpi printers (£1560 inc VAT from Archive). Even that beauty is cheaper than any Postscript laser printer. However, Postscript output is also provided, including output to file for typesetting. By using !PC-Dir, transfer to a PC-format disc should be easy, but can anyone tell me of a typsetting service which exists now for Impression users that will handle Archimedes discs directly? 4.5 Graphics 4.5 Impression makes no claim to be a graphics package. CC’s attitude is, apparently, that it makes much more sense to multi-task it with other software than to make it larger – too large for 1Mb machines – by duplicating the kinds of thing that !Draw does. DTP packages that include a graphics capability usually offer little beyond tables, rectangles, circles and the like. A stand-alone package will, in general, be needed for anything more complex. (Incidentally, !Draw+, a.k.a. !Draw1½, on Shareware 34 is a vast improvement on !Draw but the FPE must be loaded first – see Archive 4.3 p23.) 4.5 Impression’s scaling, cropping and rotating of imported graphics is beyond reproach. When combined with the software supplied with its scanners, the handling of graphics images is further extended. I do, however, have one ‘wish’. At the Computer Shopper Show, I asked CC how to get text to flow round graphics images (as opposed to the frame holding the image) as, for example, around the keyboard in the original Impression advert in Archives 3.2 to 3.9. “It’s a trick”, they had to admit, achieved by the use of several small frames in a step formation down the edge of the keyboard. They promised it for a future release. It’ll be nice when it arrives, as the majority (but not all) of Mac and PC packages provide such a facility. 4.5 Impression in context 4.5 Before I prepared this article, I was impressed with Impression (groan) but had no real idea how it compared with PC- and Mac-based systems. I’m sorry if it’s turned out to be a eulogy for CC’s flagship package. From what I’ve seen of Ovation, it also provides a powerful DTP facility at a price which would amaze users of other machines even more than does the cost of Impression. Remember, the list prices for all the DTP packages which Byte tested are $795. The document publishing systems are $995 and we all know the kind of dollar conversion rates which apply to US- originated software! 4.5 I was amazed at what the famous packages of which I’d heard so much, but never used, do not have, making a good word processor – and a lot of ‘to-ing and fro-ing’ – essential. 4.5 My ‘wish-list’ for Impression really only runs to two entries – proper variable tracking and a more powerful kerning facility. The timed back- up which Ovation offers would also be useful, especially as, not surprisingly for such a powerful program, Impression is not yet totally crash-proof. 4.5 Were I a PC or Mac user, I’d be asking why Computer Concepts invested so much time on software for such a minority-interest machine. Assuming that a 80386 or 68030 is powerful enough, then Impression on one of them could have swept the market with the right price and advertising, and made much more money for Computer Concepts. 4.5 As I’m an Archimedes user, I’m glad to confirm that Impression more than holds its own in the wider context of DTP and document publishing programs on any personal computer. A 4.5 4.5 4.5 Preparing Material for Archive 4.5 Paul Beverley 4.5 In order to speed up the preparation of the magazine, I would ask that people sending in material on disc should try to follow a set of guidelines − what you might call the “house style” of Archive. 4.5 Disc format 4.5 The text you send in can be in any disc format you like: 3½“ or 5¼”, E, D or L format − even MSDOS if you really have to! 4.5 Wordprocessor / DTP format 4.5 We can cope with almost any WP / DTP format but, for preference, would like Impression since that is the application we actually use when producing the magazine. If you do have Impression or Impression Junior, let us know and we will send you a sample document with the styles on it. Come to think of it, we might as well send you this document as a sample! 4.5 House style 4.5 For those of you who produce a lot of printed material, I know it’s difficult to change your style but, if at all possible, I would like people to prepare their articles for Archive with a particular “house style”. I’m not talking about your style of writing − your turn of phrase etc − I mean the way you lay it out. A few examples will show you what I mean. 4.5 Headings 4.5 If you look at the title of this article, you will see it is in titles, i.e. initial capital letters for the main words, whereas the section headings only use an initial capital letter on the first word except where the word would have a capital anyway, like “Impression” or “Archive”, or the name of a product like: “How to use Impression”. 4.5 Indents 4.5 There is no need to create indents, either with spaces or tabs. This is dealt with automatically by the “styles” used in Impression. Thus, if you have a couple of lines of program to insert in the text, as for example: 4.5 10 REM> WonderProg 4.5 100 PRINT “This is a load of rubbish” 4.5 110 GOTO 100 4.5 What you should send in as text is just: 4.5 10 REM> WonderProg 4.5 100 PRINT “This is a load of rubbish” 4.5 110 GOTO 100 4.5 I then give it styles which set the typeface and add the indent. If you had already given it indents by adding your own spaces, I would have to strip them out otherwise I would get a double indent. 4.5 Impression styles 4.5 The observant among you may have noticed that the “space after paragraph” for the first two lines of the program is smaller than that after the last line. This is done deliberately in order to separate out the program segment from the rest of the text and yet not have the program itself too widely spaced. To achieve this we have two different styles: programtext and programtextend. I am sure that you to work out which is which! 4.5 Tables 4.5 If you have tables within the text and you lay out the data in column by using spaces, remember that what looks OK in mono-spaced type looks funny when typeset in a proportionally spaced type. 4.5 Thus... 4.5 Brown 6.5 13.6 11.11 4.5 Alliss 2.3 9.6 88.88 4.5 Mummy 1.1 11.1 99.99 4.5 may look OK separated by spaces but if I put that into proportionally spaced text, you get: 4.5 Brown 6.5 13.6 11.11 4.5 Alliss 2.3 9.6 88.88 4.5 Mummy 1.1 11.1 99.99 4.5 If you want to uses spaces to print it out, that’s fine − I then just use search & replace to change multiple spaces into tabs. However, if you can present it using tabs, it makes my life easier. 4.5 If you are using Impression and you set up a table using a new ruler, firstly remember that the text has to fit, if possible, into a normal column width and, secondly, don’t leave the names of any new rulers as “Ruler1”, “Ruler2” etc. Use your own name or some code word, like Lynch1, Lynch2 etc. The reason for this is that when you paste text from one document (your article) into another (the magazine) if a style of the same name exists, it maintains the definition specified in the destination document so you will lose your carefully set out tabulations. 4.5 Abbreviations 4.5 I try, as far as I can, to use standard abbreviations and I try to be consistent (but don’t always succeed). Here is a list of some I use: 4.5 a.m. (with full stops) 4.5 BASIC (not Basic) 4.5 e.g. (with full stops) 4.5 i.e. (with full stops) 4.5 Kbytes or just K (not Kb and not k or kbytes. Yes, that’s a change to make it consistent with Mbytes.) 4.5 Mbytes or just M (and not Mb) 4.5 p.m. (with full stops) 4.5 RISC-OS (not RISC OS, Risc OS, RISCOS etc as I have seen in other documents) 4.5 We refer to the computer we all know and love as an Archimedes, not an Arc or an Archie, please. 4.5 Archive references 4.5 When referring to articles etc in previous issues of Archive, the convention is to use, 4.5 “Archive 3.4 p45” 4.5 Spell-checking 4.5 If possible, please run a spell-checker over your text before sending it in. 4.5 Dashes and hyphens 4.5 A hyphen is the character on the keyboard between the zero and the equals sign and is the thing used in hyphenated words − e.g. RISC-OS − whereas dashes are produced as <alt-153> or from the !Chars application and are used for separating bits of text as earlier in this sentence. On !Chars, (in Trinity, anyway) it’s the third of the dash-like characters − under the letter y. If you are using system font then it’s the underlined d, again under the y. 4.5 To save all this hassle, all you need to do is use a double hyphen where you want a dash. This is a common practice but I can’t demonstrate it because at some stage, I will be doing a global search & replace on this document and the double hyphen will end up as a dash! 4.5 Describing keyboards actions 4.5 The conventions we use in Archive magazine to represent keyboard and mouse actions are best illustrated by a bit of meaningless sample text: 4.5 If you want to press the return key (no angle brackets on return) or one of the other keys I would tell you to press <return>, or to press <N>, <Y> or <?>. To start up, press <shift-break> and use <ctrl-shift-f5> (use f5, not F5) or double-click on the icon (<select> is assumed if you don’t mention which mouse button) but click <adjust> (not “the right hand button”) if you want to add something to the selection. In PipeDream we have control sequences like <ctrl-BSE> for searching which actually means pressing <ctrl-B> and then <S> and then <E> but for convenience we put them all together in one set of angle brackets. 4.5 Comments on English style 4.5 One of the common errors (well, I think they are errors − others may think they is a matter of style) that I have to correct are that you should never use a preposition to end a sentence with. And you should never start a sentence with a conjunction like “and” or “but”. But people do! However, it is OK to use “however” to start a sentence. Also, you can use “also” to start a sentence. 4.5 As a general rule, writers tend to make their paragraphs too long. It makes the text easier to read if it is broken up into smaller logical units. Also, it is good to use (short) titles at regular intervals to make the structure of the article easier to gather for busy people who haven’t time to read every word of every article and just want to find the bit of a review that declares itself to be the “Conclusion”. 4.5 Writing reviews 4.5 While I’m on the subject of reviews, could reviewers try to think themselves into the position of the person reading the review who has never heard of the product? If they want to buy a copy, they need to know, at the very least, how much it costs and who the supplier is. It is also useful if you can mentioned the version number of the software under test so that people can see whether it is the current version that was being tested or an earlier version. A 4.5 4.5 FlexiFile 4.5 John Schild 4.5 Minerva Software are marketing Flexifile as a RISC-OS multi-tasking replacement for System Delta Plus, one of the first database management systems to be available for the Archimedes. In attempting to review it, I feel somewhat handicapped by the fact that I have never used System Delta Plus, and it is therefore difficult to judge this important new product by its own ancestry. However, I have come to Flexifile with a number of convictions about what a DBMS (database management system) ought to offer, and after living with it for some weeks my reactions are mixed. 4.5 This is serious software aimed at a discriminating market − and it does most things well − but for me it is flawed by some errors and omissions which all but vitiate its many powerful features. Very much to my disappointment, I think I have to conclude that Archimedes users may go on waiting for the definitive DBMS at an accessible price. 4.5 I am aware that other potential users, with needs different from my own, might find my criticisms trivial and with this possibility firmly in mind, I have decided to reverse normal procedure and present my conclusions first. 4.5 Conclusions 4.5 My principle criticisms of Flexifile concern its structure and its input/output facilities. I don’t think I am trying to be funny when I say that Minerva probably trusted the writing of Flexifile to one of their adventure games experts. It is mouse-mad! Too many important features can only be accessed by the right number of clicks on the correct mouse button over the appropriate bit of the relevant window, and if these functions are in only occasional use, the mouse operations are simply too difficult to remember and very cumbersome to trace through the manual. 4.5 Trend setting software products such as Pipedream and Impression have adopted the path of comprehensive menus with key short cuts which can gradually be learned − but every important function can be accessed from a menu, a vital feature of a large program with many possible opera tions. Using Flexifile as a beginner requires constant reference to the manual to learn the appropriate mouse actions. It demands too much learning time and I do not find it at all intuitive. 4.5 My other significant complaint is about the import and export of data, which I find quite inadequately supported. Data can be taken in only from the keyboard or from other Minerva database programs via a slow operating conversion utility. For Flexifile to be seriously useful to existing data managers, Minerva must give us some import facilities for the most common PC programs, and certainly for Pipedream. 4.5 My final reservation concerns the utterly frustrating fact that all data taken from Flexifile for importing to another program such as a word processor comes packed out with ASCII character 32 spaces − fine if you are exporting to an old-fashioned mono-spaced WP with easily adjustable line length, but painfully frustrating if you want to take a table into something like an Impression frame. This is unfortunately the case whichever of the report formats is in use. Has the programmer never heard of TSV or CSV formats? 4.5 It is wonderful to be able to multi-task with a DTP program and drag the contents of a card straight across into a waiting text frame − but the benefit is simply thrown away if you then have to spend even more time chasing all those irrelevant ASCII 32s (all the more difficult because you can’t see them!). 4.5 The same limitation is present in a different way in label production. There is a label facility and it is relatively simple to produce a “mask” of the desired fields from a database laid out for label production. However, if a single line requires several fields, e.g. title, first name and surname, Flexifile will not close up the empty spaces in the fields, but leaves unsightly gaps in the printout. It is so frustrating just because it is so unnecessary and Flexifile already costs enough without users being obliged to purchase alternative front ends for adequate report production. 4.5 All that said, I want to emphasise that this is not Mickey Mouse software, but packed with powerful and sophisticated features, which I will now try briefly to describe. 4.5 Presentation 4.5 Flexifile comes on a single 3.5“ disc containing the utility and some useful sample files fully documented in a well produced 164 page manual. The manual is divided into tutorial and reference sections, but the tutorial section alone is not sufficient to get the new user started. Minerva have chosen to protect their product with a key disc require ment. Although working discs may be freely created on floppies or a hard disc, the original key disc must be inserted before files can be loaded and work begin. This irksome procedure can be avoided on payment of a further £30 for a single user unprotected version, or a larger sum for a multi-user site licence. Flexifile loads to the icon bar, and operates in a windowed environment alongside other RISC-OS products. In-memory transfer to and from other co-operating packages is generously supported but I found that, in practice, it was necessary to drag filer icons via a RAM disc to set up a path and avoid an error message. 4.5 FlexiFile in use 4.5 Existing files can be loaded in two different ways. Double clicking on a filer icon will load a file using the minimum of the computer’s own RAM − useful for 1 megabyte systems. Alternatively, dragging the same filer icon to the application icon on the icon bar opens a window allowing the user to set the level of memory use − very helpful in speeding up searches on a large file if enough RAM is available. More than one window can be open at a time and files can be linked, allowing data to be extracted from a second file which contains data matching that in the parent file. This feature falls short of true “relational” properties as described in my article in Archive 4.2 but is still very useful. One limitation is that only two files may be so linked − the true relational model assumes unlimited linkage. 4.5 The card and tools windows 4.5 Opening a file window reveals the card laid out according to the user’s choice, with fields in any desired position in the window. Field names are assigned to each field but need not be displayed on the card. The familiar field types (string, numeric, etc) are supported, as are graphics windows. At the card design stage, fields can be designated as key fields, allowing quick searches to be made. “Soundex” properties can be assigned to any chosen field, speeding up the search for such items as surnames where the precise spelling is not known. Any number of fields can be designated as index fields, allowing the database to be presented at will in different alphabetical orders. These key and index facilities are valuable, but a price has to be paid in terms of the speed of the search operation. 4.5 Most reviewers shower praise on Minerva’s “video style” tool display used for moving around the database and setting up simple searches. My enthusiasm is tempered by the fact that the different tool functions are mouse selected in a small window, and inadequately labelled, so the beginner is too much at the mercy of the manual. However, once mastered, the tools window is very helpful for browsing a database, making quick searches, selecting an index or subset, adding new cards and initiating field calculations employing a macro definition. 4.5 My favourite Flexifile gimmick is that dragging a number to the telephone icon will cause the computer speaker to output Telecom touchtones into the mouthpiece of your phone! If your local exchange has gone digital you can now dial out straight from the database. I like it but I wonder if it still works on a machine which has had the pitch of its voice raised by the fitting of a video enhancer? Does anybody know? 4.5 Clicking <menu> over the card window leads off to a range of familiar features. 4.5 Macros 4.5 Macros are expressions which can be made to operate on the contents of selected fields. They can range from a simple multiplier (for example, to raise all the prices in a price list by the same percentage) to a complex conditional bit of mathematics best left to an expert. Up to 30 lines of macro expressions (conforming to BASIC syntax) can be typed into an edit window or imported by dragging in an ASCII file. Once a macro definition has been entered, it can operate either globally, or on a single displayed card. This is a powerful feature of Flexifile. 4.5 Card 4.5 Card allows the card display to be resized or the current card selected for deletion. It also allows the entire contents of a card to be exported either to a disc file or to another application, but sadly, trailing all those troublesome spaces. An alternative route to the same end is to drag the mouse pointer with <adjust> across the desired fields only from top left to bottom right, which is obviously more selective. Incidentally, single fields can be dragged out in a similar manner. 4.5 File 4.5 The most important function of File is to open up the complex search window, allowing search expressions to operate on selected fields and placing the result in a target subset. This is a powerful facility which merits careful study of the manual to get the best out of it. Once a search list has been established, it is stored as a subset and, if desired, just this subset can be displayed in the card window and reports produced from it. The second function of the file menu allows the compaction of a file which has become untidy through deletions. 4.5 Window 4.5 The window menu leads off to many functions of which the most important is Reports. I have to confess I find the menu structure here quite bewildering and would urge Minerva to do a bit of rebuilding. Clicking on Report opens a report window onto one of five report formats. Clicking with <menu> over this window allows a different report type to be selected. 4.5 Card produces a vertical strip of cards down the screen which can be browsed using the scroll bars, printed or exported. 4.5 Sheet brings to the screen a spreadsheet display, to which fields can be added either by dragging from the card window to the report window or by opening up a setup window into which the required field names can be typed. The setup box offers several additional options such as the totalling of numeric fields. The report can either be printed or exported. 4.5 Formula allows cards to be selected for printing or exporting according to Flexifile’s set of search expressions. 4.5 Label allows the production of address labels. I have previously commented that spaces are not stripped from adjacent fields on the same line nor empty fields closed up, leaving the output looking decidedly amateurish. A great pity. 4.5 Paged allows for the incorporation of headers in a report covering several pages. 4.5 Apart from those ubiquitous ASCII 32s, my other disappointment with the Flexifile reports facility is that it does not allow user-designed reports with flexible layout and strings incorporated alongside search data. 4.5 Other essential routines are selected by clicking <menu> over the application icon on the icon bar. Create is to be found there, allowing new card layouts to be designed. It works, as obviously it must, but it is far from user friendly. Fast sort allows a file to be “mechanically” sorted on the disc rather than relying on a resident index. Transfer allows a new database to be cloned from an existing one with fields added or removed. 4.5 That, then, is an outline of Flexifile − a powerful piece of programming intelligently exploiting RISC-OS facilities, but strangely lacking in some important respects. If Minerva Software could be persuaded to give us Flexifile II in due course with adequate import and export facilities and a more user friendly structure, it would be a winner. A 4.5 4.5 Public Key Cryptography 4.5 Brian Cowan 4.5 The theory of numbers has traditionally been regarded as one of the purest branches of pure mathematics, having no practical applications. The great British mathematician G.H.Hardy was once asked of what benefit to mankind was his study of the theory of numbers. He replied that although of no use, it did no harm, unlike other areas of scientific endeavour. He could not have been more mistaken. It turns out that number theory, particularly that part which deals with prime numbers, is at the heart of all sophisticated coding systems and is therefore used by the military forces throughout the world! 4.5 Public key cryptography 4.5 In the simple methods for encoding messages, knowledge of the encoding algorithm permits knowledge of the decoding algorithm. Thus, for instance, if the message is encoded by swapping various letters around, then decoding is effected by simply swapping in the reverse way. Public Key Cryptography does not work in this way. Knowledge of the rule by which a message was encoded is not sufficient to permit its decoding. A third piece of information is required: something which relates the encryption and decryption recipes. 4.5 Practical operation 4.5 So how would this operate in practice? Encoding and decoding are effected by two different keys. These two keys are generated from the third “connecting” key. The owner of these keys can then make public his encryption key for messages he receives (his public key) and people can then send him messages which no one else can decode. So if you want to send someone a secret message you look up his public key and use that for encoding. He decodes it using his private key, known only to himself. 4.5 Message authentication 4.5 The scheme can also be used in reverse. If you encode a message using your private key then if someone knows it is from you then they can decode it with your public key. The message is not then secret, but the receiver can be sure who sent the message. However, full secrecy may be obtained by the method of double encryption. Having encoded the message with your private key, it is then encoded once again with the receiver’s public key. Thus full security is obtained, of great benefit, for instance, in business transactions. 4.5 The RSA algorithm 4.5 A paper published by Rivest, Shamir and Adleman in 1977 proposed a method for encoding which incorporates the above ideas. The main problem with any method is its security. Is it possible for a dedicated hacker with a powerful computer to crack the code? In other words, knowing the public key, can he find the private key? For the RSA method, cracking the code is related to the factorisation of very large numbers. To factorise the sort of numbers we are dealing with, using current computers, would take a time longer than the age of the universe! Thus the method seems quite secure. (Roger Sewell, technical editor of the Archimedes Public Key, says that, to be fair, there are some techniques that would factorise it faster than that − it would only take a few hundreds of thousands of years! Ed) 4.5 The Public Key magazine 4.5 A magazine has just been published for people interested in the aspects of Public Key Cryptography. There are two sorts of people that this is catering for. Firstly, there is the aspiring mathematician/code breaker and then there is the potential user, concerned with sending and receiving secure messages. 4.5 The Public Key caters for both. In the first issue, there are articles explaining the RSA algorithm, one covering the practical essentials and one treating the mathematics of the algorithm. Twenty pages contain a BASIC and assembler program for encryption, decryption and the genera tion of keys. Clearly it is impracticable to type such a program in by hand, so a disc is supplied containing the program. 4.5 Running the program 4.5 The program runs as a single task and the user is advised to quit the desktop. I followed the instructions and managed to produce a public and a private key. All went well. Also, I found it quite easy to encode some chunks of text. However, I have not got as far as sending them to someone to see if they can actually decode them! 4.5 First Impression 4.5 The first issue of the magazine has forty A4 pages, Impressively produced using Impression. The editor is George Foot, and Roger Sewell is the technical editor. The program is straightforward to use and it is certainly a good application for exploiting the power and speed of the Archimedes. At the back of the magazine is a list of public keys of various people. One such person is David Pilling, the author of much high quality and reasonably priced Archimedes software. For all Archimedes owners interested in Public Key Cryptography and all aspects of codes and code breaking, this is the magazine for you. (After Archive, of course!) 4.5 Fact file 4.5 The Public Key is available from George Foot, “Waterfall”, Uvedale Road, Oxted, Surrey, RH8 0EW. 4.5 Cost of the magazine is £1 for UK, £2 for EEC countries and £3 for overseas air mail. The disc may be obtained for £2.50. A 4.5 4.5 Some Notes on I-APL 4.5 Alan Angus 4.5 I have experimented with I-APL for a while, and it has a lot of potential in mathematics education. Anyone interested in learning or using maths should consider getting a copy of the interpereter. You also need to get a good introductory book on APL. The two books I am using to explore APL are Howard A. Peelle, APL An Introduction published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston 1986 and M. A. Curth, H. Edelmann APL a problem-oriented introduction published by Ellis Horwood 1989. Peelle’s book is better for the beginner. 4.5 I started off using APL in a very simple way, doing some work on functions with a minimal amount of programming. It rapidly became obvious that you can do a lot of useful work with very little, and that the very limited memory space available (32k!) is not too big a handicap. The reason for the small memory is compatibility across a range of implementations of I-APL for many different machines, however a 32bit Archimedes implementation with large memory, and I imagine high speed, is in an advanced state of development. 4.5 The following listings show the contents of my simple functions workspace FUNC . 4.5 START 4.5 THIS IS A SIMPLE SET OF PROGRAMS ON THE IMPORTANT MATHEMATICAL IDEA OF FUNCTIONS. YOU CAN THINK OF A FUNCTION AS A MACHINE THAT TURNS ONE NUMBER INTO ANOTHER ONE. 4.5 THERE ARE 3 LITTLE PROGRAMS, PART1, PART2, PART3. WORK THROUGH EACH OF THEM IN TURN. YOU WILL NEED TO KEEP NOTES OF WHAT YOU DO. AFTER COMPLETING EACH PART WRITE AN ACCOUNT OF WHAT YOU DID AND OF ANYTHING YOU DISCOVERED 4.5 4.5 PART1 4.5 FOUR FUNCTIONS HAVE BEEN DEFINED WITH THE NAMES A, B, C, D. 4.5 YOUR JOB IS TO FIND OUT WHAT THEY DO. TYPE IN A FUNCTION LETTER FOLLOWED BY A SPACE AND A NUMBER. 4.5 FOR EXAMPLE, B 4 4.5 NOTE WHAT THE COMPUTER GIVES YOU AS A RESULT. 4.5 THE FUNCTION i CAN MAKE YOUR TASK EASIER. i10 PRODUCES THE LIST 4.5 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 4.5 TO GET i PRESS THE SHIFT AND I KEYS. 4.5 NOW TRY TYPING IN B i10 WHAT DOES THE FUNCTION B DO TO THE NUMBERS? TRY TO FIND OUT WHAT A, C AND D DO TO THE NUMBERS YOU GIVE THEM. 4.5 4.5 PART2 4.5 NOW THAT YOU KNOW WHAT EACH OF OUR FUNCTIONS DO TRY THE FOLLOWING COMBINATIONS. 4.5 A B 3 4.5 B A 5 4.5 B B i5 4.5 WHAT DO THEY DO? 4.5 NOW TRY OUT OTHER TWO LETTER COMBINATIONS AND WRITE DOWN WHAT YOU CAN FIND OUT ABOUT THEM. 4.5 4.5 PART3 4.5 NOTE DOWN THE FOLLOWING SEQUENCES OF NUMBERS. 4.5 EACH ONE CAN BE PRODUCED BY USING A PAIR OF OUR FUNCTIONS WITH THE i FUNCTION. 4.5 0 1 4 9 16 25 36 49 64 81 4.5 1 16 81 256 625 1296 4.5 9 36 81 144 225 4.5 3 12 27 48 75 4.5 3 1.5 1 0 0.75 0.6 0.5 4.5 YOUR JOB IS TO FIND THE RIGHT COMBINATION OF FUNCTIONS SO THAT YOU CAN REPRODUCE EACH SEQUENCE. FOR EXAMPLE −1 0 1 2 IS PRODUCED BY THE COMBINED FUNCTION C C i4 4.5 GOOD LUCK 4.5 Here is a listing of the function definitions using standard characters to represent the APL characters. 4.5 Z <− A X 4.5 Z <− XxX squares the input 4.5 Z <− B X 4.5 Z <− 3xX outputs 3 times the input 4.5 Z <− C X 4.5 Z <− X−1 input minus 1 4.5 Z <− D X 4.5 Z <− ÷X reciprocal 4.5 The best is yet to come 4.5 This is only a tiny taste of the potential of APL in maths education, using very few of the many functions built in to the interpreter. I have kept it very simple to avoid problems with printing the special APL characters in the magazine. Hopefully, in time a way will be found to overcome this difficulty, and we will see some APL articles in Archive. (That should be quite possible now that I am doing the magazine on Impression II. Ed.) 4.5 There are many powerful functions in this language, and they operate on scalars, vectors and arrays. Simple combinations of functions can do matrix multiplication and many, many other things. The potential is enormous. 4.5 I-APL can supply the program for the Archimedes with a manual for £4.50. They can also supply a number of books, including some APL Press titles which have been difficult to get hold of in recent times. Any enquiries about I-APL should be sent to: I-APL Ltd, 2 Blenheim Rd, St Albans, Herts, AL1 4NR. 4.5 The reason why I-APL is so cheap is that it was developed by enthusiasts to make APL available to schools at a minimum cost, and its development has been funded by the British APL Association and others. Many thanks are due to all who are involved in the I-APL project, and I only hope that teachers and students of mathematics will take advantage of the results of all this effort. 4.5 If you become an APL addict, why not join the British APL Association and get their journal VECTOR, or at least subscribe to the education newsletter? A 4.5 4.5 Irlam Instruments 133 London Road, Staines, Middlesex TW18 4HN. (0895- 811401) 4.5 Krisalis Software Teque House, Mason’s Yard, Downs Row, Moorgate, Rotherham, S60 2HD. 4.5 Longman−Logotron Dales Brewery, Gwydir Street, Cambridge, CB1 2LJ. (0223−323656) (−460208) 4.5 Minerva Systems Minerva House, Baring Crescent, Exeter, EX1 1TL. (0392−437756) (−421762) 4.5 Oak Solutions (p20) Cross Park House, Low Green, Rawdon, Leeds, LS19 6HA. (0532−502615) (−506868) 4.5 Ray Maidstone (p13) 421 Sprowston Road, Norwich, NR3 4EH. (0603−407060) (−417447) 4.5 RESOURCE Exeter Road, Doncaster, DN2 4PY. (0302−340331) 4.5 Silicon Vision Ltd Signal House, Lyon Road, Harrow, Middlesex, HA1 2AG. (081−422−2274) (−427−5169) 4.5 Simtron Ltd 4 Clarence Drive, East Grinstead, W. Sussex, RH19 4RZ. (0342−328188) 4.5 The Serial Port Burcott Manor, Wells, Somerset, BA5 1NH. (0243−531194) (−531196) 4.5 Topologika P.O. Box 39, Stilton, Peterborough, PE7 3RL. (0733−244682) A 4.5 4mation Linden Lea, Rock Park, Barnstaple, Devon, EX32 9AQ. (0271−45566) 4.5 Abacus Training 29 Okus Grove, Upper Stratton, Swindon, Wilts, SN2 6QA. 4.5 Acorn Direct 13 Dennington Road, Wellingborough, Northants, NN8 2RL. 4.5 Acorn Computers Ltd Fulbourn Road, Cherry Hinton, Cambridge, CB1 4JN. (0223−245200) (−210685) 4.5 Aleph One Ltd (p19) The Old Courthouse, Bottisham, Cambridge, CB5 9BA. (0223−811679) (−812713) 4.5 Apricote Studios (p6) 2 Purls Bridge Farm, Manea, Cambridgeshire, PE15 0ND. (035−478−432) 4.5 Atomwide Ltd (p26) 23 The Greenway, Orpington, Kent, BR5 2AY. (0689−838852) (−896088) 4.5 Beebug Ltd 117 Hatfield Road, St Albans, Herts, AL1 4JS. (0727−40303) (−60263) 4.5 Cambridge International Software 8 Herbrand Street, London, WC1N 1HZ. (071−833−4023) (−837−6077) 4.5 CJE Micros 78 Brighton Road, Worthing, W Sussex, BN11 2EN. (0903−213361) (−213901) 4.5 Clares Micro Supplies 98 Mid dlewich Road, Rudheath, Northwich, Cheshire, CW9 7DA. (0606−48511) (−48512) 4.5 Colton Software (p14) 149−151 St Neots Road, Hardwick, Cambridge, CB3 7QJ. (0954−211472) (−211607) 4.5 Computereyes 16 Starnes Court, Union Street, Maidstone, Kent, ME14 1EB. (0442−63933) (−231632) 4.5 Computer Concepts (p30/31) Gaddesden Place, Hemel Hempstead, Herts, HP2 6EX. (0442−63933) (−231632) 4.5 Cygnus Software 11 Newmarke Street, Leicester, LE1 5SS. 4.5 Electronic Font Foundry (p25) Bridge House, 18 Brockenhurst Road, Ascot, SL5 9DL. (0344−28698) 4.5 EMR Ltd 14 Mount Close, Wickford, Essex, SS11 8HG. (0702−335747) 4.5 E.S.M. Duke Street, Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, PE13 2AE. (0945−63441) 4.5 Foster Findlay Associates 148 West Road, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE4 9QB. (091−273−1111) 4.5 G.A.Herdman 43 Saint Johns Drive, Clarborough, Retford, Notts, DN22 9NN 4.5 Hampshire Microtechnology Centre Connaught Lane, Paulsgrove, Portsmouth, Hants, PO6 4SJ. (0705−378266.) 4.5 Ian Copestake Software 10 Frost Drive, Wirral, L61 4XL. (051−648−6287) 4.5 IFEL (p29) 36 Upland Drive, Plymouth, Devon, PL6 6BD. (0752−847286) 4.5 4.5 Norwich Computer Services 96a Vauxhall Street, Norwich NR2 2SD. (0603−766592) (−764011) 4.5 4.5 Government Health Warning − Reading this could seriously affect your spiritual health 4.5 Naturally, our thoughts and prayers are with the innocent people in the Gulf region (on both sides of the conflict) who are suffering so terribly at the moment. What can I say in the face of such suffering? Whatever I say will sound trite. All I can do is point to Jesus dying on the cross − He knows what it is to be innocent and to die a most cruel death. God didn’t take the suffering away (even though he asked his Father to do so) but he transformed it. What looked like death and defeat was transformed into a glorious victory over the forces of evil. Does that sound far-fetched? Well, it’s what the bible teaches. (There’s no space to explain it here, but if you want to know, ask someone you know who is a Christian why the Jesus’ death is so important.) 4.5 God does miraculously take suffering away sometimes − I’ve mentioned in this column how God healed my back − but whether He takes suffering away or helps us through it, He brings good out of the evil of suffering. Let us pray that this will be seen to happen in the Gulf region very soon. 4.5 4.5 4.5 Vauxhall Street, here we come 4.5 The Obnservant among you will have noticed the significance of the password that has been used for the Archive Bulletin Board this last couple of months – Vauxhall. This relates to the fact that we have just purchased a new property for Norwich Computer Services at 96a Vauxhall Street. It was actually built as an R.S.P.C.A. clinic but has been owned for many years by Messers Hutchins & Sons Ltd who have been printing Archive magazine since Volume 1 Issue 1. 4.5 Vauxhall Street is not huge, but it will give us quite a bit more room to move than the three rooms that we were using at the Beverley’s private residence in Mile End Road. Unfortunately, although Vauxhall Street is no more than 1/2 mile away from Mile End Road, it is in a different Telecom area so all the phone numbers will have to change! 4.5 4.5 Contact Box 4.5 • Games Devotees − If anyone is interested in an Archimedes games user club, send an S.A.E. to John Charman, 45 Smiths Lane, Fakenham, Norfolk, NR21 8LQ. 4.5 • Southampton area − Anyone interested in setting up an Archimedes Users’ Group to exchange ideas, PD etc, please contact Dr Andrew Provan, 79 Roselands Gardens, Highfield, Southampton, SO2 1QJ. 4.5 • Club BBC Archimedes de Paris is a group of fifty Archimedes enthusiasts who meet every Friday afternoon from 6.30 p.m. to 8.30 p.m. at the following address (except during holidays): Ecole Superieure des Arts Appliques Duperré, 11 Rue du Petit Thouars, 75003 Paris. A 4.5 Printing problems? 4.6 Sorry about the slightly duff printing of the last edition of Archive. The boxes around the headings were all rather faded. The reason was that I was using a 600 d.p.i. Laser Direct HiRes rather than the 300 d.p.i. Mac Laserwriter. So why should a better printer produce a worse output? Basically, the Laser Direct produced the shading using such tiny dots that the offset litho printing process could not cope with it. What I have done this time is to alter the type of shading used so that the dots are a bit bigger and (hopefully) more easily printable. 4.6 Not quite so late this time? 4.6 Thanks to Impression (which I am more and more impressed with every day) I have managed to shorten the time taken to produce the magazine quite considerably. So, over the next few months, I hope to get Archive back on schedule. 4.6 A gauntlet for Risc User! 4.6 Now that Acorn User, Archimedes World and Archive all use Impression for production of their magazines, don’t you think it’s about time that Risc User followed suit? Well, I wouldn’t expect them to use Impression, but have they got enough faith in their own product, Ovation, to ditch their Apple Macs?!?! 4.6 More competitions, please. 4.6 We’re very grateful to Colin Singleton for his consistent work in producing the monthly Competition Corner, but I think it’s time he had a bit of help from others. It’s very difficult to keep producing new ideas every month, so if you could help, either write to me or direct to Colin. 4.6 More Wimp stuff, please. 4.6 We’ve had quite a number of folk asking us for more articles about programming in the Wimp environment. People were pleased with the start that Alexander Goh made but were sad that it stopped rather abruptly. So were we and, if Sandie is reading this, I hope he will consider carrying on where he left off. 4.6 Once again, many thanks to readers and contributors alike for making Archive a joy to produce. 4.6 With best wishes, 4.6 4.6 Products Available 4.6 • Data cartridges for tapestreamers − We have found a better source of data cartridges for tape-streamers and can do the 60M cartridges for £23 and the 150M cartridges for £26. The tapes for the 1 Gbyte tapestreamer which we advertise at £45 each are, apparently, just ordinary 2 hours DAT tapes that you could buy from W.H.Smiths’ or such-like for £8 or 9 and then formatted. It takes about 4 hours to format which is why Oak charge so much for them. 4.6 • DataStore Utility Disc 2 − A second disc of utilities is now available for £14.95 inc VAT or £14 through Archive. It contains: A desktop backdrop with a difference, a desktop toolbox window, a disc indexing program, a file activity monitor showing exactly which files are currently open, a list of BT phone code and areas, a utility which collects sprite name, system variables etc and enables you to set up your computer quickly at switch-on, a viewdata frame display utility, a utility that will replace your desktop A icon with an animation(!), an on-line manual utility and a fun demo. 4.6 • Disc magazine − A.S.T.E. Syracuse is an Archimedes disc magazine produced on an amateur basis. With the first issue, costing £4.99, you get a total of three discs; one containing the magazine itself and then two discs of PD software. The organisers, B Browne and A Kells, insist that it is not, as some magazine reports have said, a PD library. 4.6 • DTP (and other) utilities − A newly formed company, Design Concept, has 11 utilities mainly intended for DTP users at various prices from £1 to £2 each. We haven’t got space to detail them all here but it includes things like a shading facility for !Draw, a way of printing out all the fonts you have got, a converter from X-window bitmap fonts and a converter which stipples a colour image to two colours. Write to Design Concept for a full list. We hope to get review copies soon. 4.6 • Educational management software − Cogent Software have produced two packages for educational establishments. The first, Monitoring and Reporting, provides facilities for recording, analysing and reporting on students’ performance. The basic price of the package is £400 for a secondary school, £200 for a middle school or £150 for primary or special schools. There are additional text files for different subject areas at £50 or £65 each. The second package, Curriculum Auditing, allows you to cross-reference the experiences the pupils are given with the skills, knowledge and concepts outlined in the school’s curriculum. The pricing for this is similar to the first package. Also available from Cogent Software are optical mark readers which tie in with the management packages. 4.6 • Educational software − Chalksoft, well known for its educational software on various computers including the BBC Micro has now turned its attention to the Archimedes. Titles available include: Puncman, programs 1 to 7, (ages 7 to 15+) cover various aspects of english; Spelling − week by week (ages 6 to 14+); Reversals (ages 8 to 14+) help with the problems of d/b, p/q etc; House of Numbers (ages 6 to 13) covers maths for key stage 2; First Words & Pictures and Words & Pictures (ages 3 to 7+) concentrate on early words, matching them with pictures; Letters & Pictures (ages 6 to 8+) introduces word building skills; Numbers & Pictures (ages 4 to 6+); Maps & Landscapes (ages 9 to 14); Keyboard player, music for ages 8 to adult; Note Invaders, a musical game for ages 7 to adult and Mark Master for secondary or tertiary administration. 4.6 • Flight Path − a simulation from Storm Software aimed at 9 year olds + sets you up as the pilot of an airliner (and owner of the company) and gets you to fly the plane and run the company. It brings in aspects of maths, geography, english, science and history. Available now in Archimedes format for £36.95 inc VAT or £32 through Archive. 4.6 • Fonts galore − A newly formed company, Design Concept, has 8 innova tive new fonts for sale at ‘silly’ prices (my word, not theirs); £1.50 per font plus £2 carriage. If you want to see the sort of things they are offering, have a look at the advert on page 17. We haven’t actually got the fonts for review yet but we’ll let you know what we think when we’ve seen them. Apparently, they are designed from scratch using FontEd and include “proper hinting of the characters”. 4.6 • Genesis I to II upgrade − If you want to upgrade from Genesis I to II, all you need to do is to send your Editor disc to Oak Solutions with a suitable cheque or official order and they will send you a complete new pack. The cost of the upgrade is £34.95 + VAT for education users or £59.95 for non-education folk. Please do not send it to Norwich Computer Services. 4.6 • High speed SCSI drives − One of the advantages of SCSI is that, at the moment, “everybody is doing it” − and that means all the more commonly used computers whose names I will refrain from using. High volume production, of course, means lower prices such as we have achieved by using removable drives that were being sold into the Apple Mac market. In the same way, we have managed to find some extremely cheap and extremely fast fixed 48M drives produced by ZCL who are also selling them into the Atari and Commodore markets and for PC’s − there, I’ve said it! 4.6 They are actually 52M drives that format to about 48.6M; they have an average access time of 17ms and run at up to 1,000 Kbytes/sec (yes, 1Mbyte/sec) using an Oak SCSI interface. The “alternative test” that we use (copying a large directory with many files) takes under 7 secs. These compare with about 600 Kbytes/sec and 9.3 secs for a standard Oak 45M drive but I haven’t got any of the new HS or Worrawinnie Oak drives in stock to test for comparison. (They will be coming into stock tomorrow, but the magazine has to be at the printers tomorrow(!) so I will put the results on the Price List.) The prices are £520 for an internal 48M drive with podule and £590 for an external. 4.6 The internal drives look identical to Oak’s drives but the external drives come in a strange-looking, yukkie brown colour, extremely compact metal case with no cooling fan. The drive is mounted on its side and sits in a metal cradle made of white plastic coated metal rods (a bit like a plate rack!) to stop it falling over. Still, when you look at the price, it has to be worth considering, and if you are worried about quality (which I have to confess, I am slightly) they are guaranteed for years. This Archive price comparison my help you see if it is worth considering these drives as compared with the “zero-defect” policy and known good customer relations policy of Oak Solutions. The prices include Oak podule, VAT and carriage and the figures in brackets are the price per Mbyte. 4.6 Internal drives 4.6 Worrawinnie 45M £440 (£9.78) 4.6 High Speed 40M £520 (£13.00) 4.6 ZCL 48M £520 (£10.83) 4.6 External drives A300/400 4.6 Worrawinnie 45M £490 (£10.89) 4.6 High Speed 40M £720 (£18.00) 4.6 ZCL 48M £590 (£12.29) 4.6 External drives A3000 4.6 Worrawinnie 45M £490 (£10.89) 4.6 High Speed 40M N/A 4.6 ZCL 48M £590 (£12.29) 4.6 • Midnight Graphics’ Tracer − Now you can turn your sprites into !Draw files with this impressive utility from Dabhand Computing. The potential for DTP and improving scanned pictures is tremendous. We hope to have a review very soon. The price is £59.95 from Dabhand or £56 through Archive. 4.6 • MultiStore II − Minerva have released a new version of MultiStore (still £250 through Arc-hive) which features improved packaging and a new style ring binder and box “which give the package a much more professional image”. Exist-ing users can get an upgrade to the new software (but not the new packaging!) at a cost of £11.75 for the two new discs. MultiStore II has a new file format but, to overcome this problem, Minerva provide a transfer utility so that you can convert your old files to the new format. Minerva say, “The changes to MultiStore will not be immed-iately apparent to end users but some will notice an increase in speed”. 4.6 • NStore II − HS Software have released a new version of NStore2, their National curriculum record keeping package, still £29.95 inc VAT. Existing users can get an upgrade to the new software by returning their original disc to H.S. with a cheque for £5.00. NStore II has had many new facilities added in the light of ideas and suggestions made by teachers and advisors using the original package. These include improved ranking and alpha sorting, improved printing options, transfer of class data between discs and block data entry for groups of Statements of Attainments. Subject specific versions for secondary schools can be obtained containing levels 1 to 10 in a particular core subject. Science is available now and Maths and English are due in April. 4.6 • PD library − Westbourne Services have just started a PD library for the Archimedes. The discs are £1.50 each. Westbourne Services will supply a sample disc and catalogue for £1. 4.6 • Structural analysis of 2D frames − Civil engineers will be pleased to see that the power of the Archimedes has been harnessed to provide structural analysis of 2D frames and grids. Vision Six have two programs for each − an entry level (£150 +VAT each) allowing up to 32 items and a full version (£450 +VAT for frames and £300 +VAT for grids) where the number of items is only limited by the available memory. There is a discount if you buy both a frames and a grids program at the same time. “Never knowingly undersold” − Vision Six say that if you can find a better or even equivalent piece of software sold commercially for ANY micro at a lower price, they will refund the difference! 4.6 • ‘Two’ productivity tools − Ian Copestake Software has produced TWO − Task and Window Organiser which consists of various utilities to help you keep your desktop tidy and to set up various tasks more quickly and easily plus a number of other bits and pieces of applications. This is especially aimed at schools. £19 + VAT or £60 +VAT for a site licence. 4.6 Review software received... 4.6 We have received review copies of the following software: Carewares 4 and 6, !Voice-Builder from MJD Software, ASTE Syracuse disc mag-azine. A 4.6 4.6 • Archimedes vs BBC variable formats − There are some differences between the way that string and real variables are held on the BBC computer under BASIC 1 and 2, and on the Archimedes under BASIC 5. 4.6 String Variables − On the BBC using BASIC 1 or 2, string variables are pointed to by a ‘string information block’ which consists of : 4.6 +0 for 4 bytes : address of start of string 4.6 +4 for 1 byte : space allocated 4.6 +5 for 1 byte : current length of string 4.6 When a string is allocated, if the length is under 8 bytes, then the space allocated is the same as the length of the string. If over 8 bytes, then an extra 8 bytes is allocated to allow the string to grow by that amount before it has to be moved. When the string changes length to more than its allocation, it has to be moved to the end of the HEAP. Unfortunately, BBC BASIC has no ‘garbage collection’ routines, so the previous space is unusable. This was why it was recommended that, when allocating strings which would grow in length, it is better to allocate them first with the largest length needed. 4.6 On the Archimedes using BASIC 5, the string information block consists of just: 4.6 +0 for 4 bytes : address of start of string 4.6 +4 for 1 byte : current length of string 4.6 without the space allocated. The space allocated seems to be up to the next 4-byte boundary. When strings grow over a 4-byte boundary, they are liable to be moved to the top of the HEAP − indeed they seem to move sometimes when they shrink as well! I have not seen any ‘garbage collection’ in BASIC 5, but I have seen instances where a string has been moved to a free area within the existing HEAP, so there is some re- use of storage. 4.6 Real Variables − On the BBC using BASIC 1 or 2, a real number is held in a 5 byte field as follows: 4.6 +0 for 1 byte : Exponent plus &80 − i.e. &79 = −1, &80 = 0, &81 = +1 4.6 +1 for 4 bytes : Mantissa with MSB first, LSB last (opposite to Integers). The first bit of the first byte is the mantissa sign bit. Normalised, with an assumed 0.1 (binary) before mantissa. Positive number with sign (ie NOT 2’s complement). 4.6 On the Archimedes using BASIC 5, a real number is held in a 5 byte field as follows: 4.6 +0 for 4 bytes : Mantissa with LSB first, MSB last (same as Integers). The first bit of the fourth byte is the mantissa sign bit. Normalised, with an assumed 0.1 (binary) before mantissa. Positive number with sign (ie NOT 2’s complement). 4.6 +4 for 1 byte : Exponent plus &80 − i.e. &79 = −1, &80 = 0, &81 = +1 4.6 Zero is a special case, and is stored as 5 zero bytes in both cases. 4.6 Thus the 5 bytes are stored in the opposite order on the BBC and Archimedes, but the values of exponent and mantissa are the same. 4.6 These are minor changes, but are vital when either dumping storage, or writing machine code routines to access variables. 4.6 Martin Avison 4.6 • ARM speed tests surprise − I have, from long experience, found that, in general, the more instructions a program executes, the longer it takes. The corollary of this is that the fewer instructions, the less time it should take. However, while timing some very processor-intensive ARM code I was puzzled when on occasion I removed one instruction, and the program took longer! Also, using the program from Archive 2.6 p55 in March 1989 by Gerald Fitton for testing the ARM speed, I had run tests which, when repeated, gave different times! After much trial and error, I eventually modified Gerald’s speed test program to illustrate the strange effect I had found. 4.6 The program ArmLoop is a simple piece of code which loops a set number of times. First, care is taken to ensure that the alignment of the code is to a 256-byte boundary. Then it repeatedly assembles and calls a piece of machine code which does 16 no-operation instructions (i.e. MOVNV), loops one million times, then does 16 more no-ops. It also has a variable number of 4-byte offsets before the start of the code and a variable number of no-operation instructions in the loop. The times are displayed for each test for up to 10 4-byte offsets and up to 10 no-ops in the loop. When complete, a summary of the times is displayed. 4.6 The times show an expected increase in the time taken as the loop gets larger, but not always the expected increment for one extra instruction in the loop. As the offsets change of the start of the executed code, it would be expected that the times for the same loop size would remain constant. However, this is NOT true! There is a pattern which repeats itself every 16 bytes, or 4 word offsets, and the summary highlights with a red background the unusually long times. 4.6 Thus it can be seen that in some cases, removing an instruction from before such a loop can increase the time taken for the loop! 4.6 The conclusions reached after these tests were that for a branch instruction, every 16-byte boundary crossed by the Program Counter (which is 8 bytes ahead of the branch instruction) to its target, adds an extra 0.15 microseconds to the time taken − about the same time as a no-op instruction. 4.6 Making use of this to optimise program speed is difficult in a program with many branches, but the demonstration program includes at line 110 speed = FALSE : if this is changed to speed = TRUE, code is invoked in FNspeedup to ADD no-operations in before the loop to reduce the number of 16-byte boundaries crossed if possible. The execution times are reduced in 37% of the cases! 4.6 This is one little mystery demonstrated, but can anyone explain it? It surely makes the effects of relocating programs slightly unpredictable. Are there similar effects at any other memory boundaries? Has anyone got a comprehensive understanding of how long the ARM takes for various instructions − although it is supposed to execute one instruction per clock cycle, there are other effects on speed, like the size of operands for the MULtiply instruction, conditional execution etc. 4.6 10 REM > ArmLoop 4.6 20 MODE 12 4.6 30 PRINT “ArmLoop : Arm Loop Speed Testing Program v5 Martin Avison” 4.6 50 DIM code% 2000 4.6 60 REM align to page (256) boundary 4.6 70 code% = (code% OR &FF) +1 4.6 80 @% = &90A 4.6 90 PRINT “Base for code is at &” ~code% 4.6 110 speed = FALSE :REM <<<< change to TRUE to see speedup <<<< 4.6 120 loops% = 1000000 : REM number of loops 4.6 130 maxoff% = 10 :REM maximum offset applied 4.6 140 maxnop% = 10 :REM maximum no-ops in the loop 4.6 150 DIM time%(maxoff%,maxnop%) 4.6 160 PRINT “Number of loops = ”loops% 4.6 170 PRINT‘“Detailed timings − Summary will follow at end” 4.6 180 PRINT‘“ Offset Loop Extra Start Loop Branch Total ” 4.6 190 PRINT “ noops noops addr addr addr time ” 4.6 200 FOR noops% = 0 TO maxnop% 4.6 210 FOR off% = 0 TO maxoff% 4.6 220 PROCcall(code%+off%*4) 4.6 230 NEXT 4.6 240 PRINT 4.6 250 NEXT 4.6 270 PRINT‘“Summary of Total Times in Seconds ”; 4.6 280 IF speed PRINT “with speedup” ELSE PRINT “without speedup” 4.6 290 PRINT “Noops”; 4.6 300 @% = 5 4.6 310 FOR noops% = 0 TO maxnop% 4.6 320 PRINT noops%; 4.6 330 NEXT 4.6 350 PRINT‘“Offset” 4.6 360 FOR off% = 0 TO maxoff% 4.6 370 @% = &00005 4.6 380 COLOUR 128 4.6 390 PRINT off%; 4.6 400 @% = &20205 4.6 410 FOR noops% = 0 TO maxnop% 4.6 420 IF off% > 0 AND time%(off%, noops%) > time%(0,noops%)+2 4.6 COLOUR 129 ELSE COLOUR 128 4.6 430 PRINT time%(off%,noops%)/100; 4.6 440 NEXT 4.6 450 COLOUR 128 4.6 460 PRINT 4.6 470 NEXT 4.6 480 END 4.6 490 ================================ 4.6 500 DEF PROCcall(code%) 4.6 510 PROCassemble(code%) 4.6 520 A% = loops% 4.6 530 TIME=0 4.6 540 CALL code% 4.6 550 time%=TIME 4.6 560 @% = &00008 4.6 570 PRINT off%,noops%,extra%,~code% ,~loop , ~branch; 4.6 580 @% = &20208 4.6 590 PRINT time% /100 4.6 600 time%(off%,noops%) = time% 4.6 610 ENDPROC 4.6 630 DEF PROCassemble(code%) 4.6 640 extra% = 0 4.6 650 FOR opt=0 TO 2 STEP 2 4.6 660 P%=code% 4.6 670 [OPT opt 4.6 680 FNnop(16) 4.6 690 FNnop(extra%) 4.6 700 .loop 4.6 710 FNnop(noops%) 4.6 720 SUBS R0,R0,#1 4.6 730 FNspeedup(“loop”) 4.6 740 BGT loop 4.6 750 FNnop(16) 4.6 760 MOV PC,R14 4.6 770 ] 4.6 780 NEXT 4.6 790 ENDPROC 4.6 810 DEF FNnop(n%) 4.6 820 IF n% > 0 THEN 4.6 830 LOCAL I% 4.6 840 FOR I% = 1 TO n% 4.6 850 [OPT opt:MOVNV R0,R0:] 4.6 860 NEXT 4.6 870 ENDIF 4.6 880 =0 4.6 900 DEF FNspeedup(label$) 4.6 910 LOCAL label,l%,b% 4.6 920 branch = P% 4.6 930 label = EVAL(label$) 4.6 940 IF speed AND (opt AND 2) = 0 AND label < branch THEN 4.6 950 l% = (label) MOD 16/4 4.6 960 b% = (branch+8) MOD 16/4 4.6 970 IF l% > b% THEN extra%=4 ATNl% 4.6 980 ENDIF 4.6 990 =0 4.6 Martin Avison 4.6 • Cheat (revised) for Man-At-Arms − Gets rid of the bug in the last cheat! This one gives you infinite lives and punches! 4.6 10 *LOAD $.!MANATARMS.CASTLE2 10000 4.6 20 *LOAD $.!MANATARMS.CASTLE3 52000 4.6 30 ?&19198=0:?&521F4=0 4.6 40 *SAVE $.!MANATARMS.CASTLE2 10000 +10000 10000 10000 4.6 50 *SAVE $.!MANATARMS.CASTLE3 52000 +1000 52000 52000 4.6 If you want to turn the game back into its original form change the two variables in line 30 to the value of 1. Mark Faulkner 4.6 • Cheat for Pysanki − This cheat gives you Infinite lives and missiles. 4.6 10 *LOAD $.!PYSANKI.PYSANKI2 10000 4.6 20 *LOAD $.!PYSANKI.PYSANKI3 52000 4.6 30 ?&19178=0:?&52278=0 4.6 40 *SAVE $.!PYSANKI.PYSANKI2 10000 +10000 10000 10000 4.6 50 *SAVE $.!PYSANKI.PYSANKI3 52000 +1000 52000 52000 4.6 If you want to turn the game back into its original form, change the two variables in line 30 to the value of 1. Mark Faulkner 4.6 • Cheat for Kaptain Konflikt − This cheat gives you 160 grenades and infinite power! 4.6 *DIR !KONFLIKT 4.6 LOAD“NEWVERT” 4.6 LIST 1120 4.6 1120.Var_grenades:EQUD 160 (160 Number of grenades!) 4.6 LIST 6940 4.6 6940 REPEAT:!Var_man_shot=0: 4.6 UNTIL !Var_lift_off=3 4.6 SAVE “NEWVERT” 4.6 Also, here are all the passwords (backwards Ed.) − ELBRAM, REKAEPS, CITATS, TCAPMI, ELIBOM. Mark Faulkner 4.6 • Cheat for Alerion − This cheat gives you infinite lives! 4.6 10 *LOAD $.!ALERION.G 1E06C 4.6 20 ?&2749C=0 4.6 30 *SAVE $.!ALERION.G 1E06C +226A4 26ABC 4.6 To convert the game to its original form change the value of the variable in line 20 the 1. Mark Faulkner 4.6 • Cheat for Mad Professor Mariarti − This cheat gives you infinite lives and energy. Edit the !RUN file in the !MadProf Directory with !EDIT. Then when you have it Edited look to see where it loads in the program ‘Profprog’. Then just delete the code after it and add this code below :- 4.6 Load Profprog 4.6 Echo <21> 4.6 | Infinite energy 4.6 MemoryA 18F48 F0000000 4.6 MemoryA 1919C F0000000 4.6 MemoryA 1920C F0000000 4.6 MemoryA 19F00 F0000000 4.6 MemoryA 19F70 F0000000 4.6 MemoryA 186B4 F0000000 4.6 MemoryA 19B08 F0000000 4.6 MemoryA 1D260 F0000000 4.6 MemoryA 18D84 F0000000 4.6 | Infinite lives 4.6 MemoryA 196B4 F0000000 4.6 Echo <6> 4.6 Go 4.6 RMKILL Musicmodule 4.6 RMKill Joystick 4.6 RMKill Teqmodule 4.6 TequeRmMin 4.6 RMKill TequeMemory 4.6 FX 15 0 4.6 DIR ^ 4.6 Echo Bye Bye professor! 4.6 Remember to keep a copy of the original !RUN file so you can return the game to its original form again. 4.6 • Disc free space snag − The RISC-OS desktop filer COUNT menu option provides a very useful way of checking the size of individual files, applications and whole directories (and any nested sub directories). However, it is somewhat economical with the truth. 4.6 You may well find that the *COUNT of a particular application or directory structure indicates that it will fit comfortably onto a floppy or RAM disc that you have already checked for *FREE space. However, when you try and copy the files across you may get a ‘Disc full’ error. 4.6 The reason is that *COUNT takes no account of the space occupied by the catalogues of directories themselves; this is 2k per directory on an ADFS or RAM disc. So a directory containing several applications, some perhaps with further sub directories, will take up a lot more space than the *COUNT option would have you believe. 4.6 Rick Sterry, Wakefield BBC Micro User Group 4.6 • Fortran bug − There is a bug in the DACOS (double precision arc- cosine) function on Fortran release 2. The function does not work if it is given a numeric, rather than algebraic, argument. Thus PI=DACOS(−1.0D0) does not give a value of p as it should. To get p, you have to use ANG=−1.0D0 followed by PI=DACOS(ANG) where ANG is any variable name you like. Raymond Wright, Guildford. 4.6 • Keyboard cleaning − I recently tried this after reading about it in Archive 3.9 p10. It was even easier than the magazine article suggested. Whilst I had the keyboard apart, I pulled off the key tops and gave them a gentle scrub with soap, warm water and a nail brush as they were getting grubby. I now have a gleaming keyboard that anyone could be proud of. David Livsey, Exeter. 4.6 • PrinterDM with the LC24-10 − Here is some thing any one using an LC24- 10 with new !PrinterDM (Ver 2.46) If you are getting banded graphics dumps and squashed text then make a copy of the Text file PrDataScr file found inside the application directory. 4.6 Load the copy in to !Edit and look at all the Epson LQ definitions for the line below. 4.6 line_epilogue: “<27>$<0><0><27>J <24>” 4.6 Change all LQ definitions except the 60 by 60dpi to:- 4.6 line_epilogue: “<27>$<0><0><27>J <28>” 4.6 this having been done, save the file. 4.6 Delete the data file PrData. You can either rename the changed text file to PrData and check all is OK before using the supplied compacting program (PrSquasher) or, if you are confident there are no mistakes, compact it first before trying it out. 4.6 If you still get banding or gaps appearing then adjust the value between the < > symbols of the last parameter. This may possibly work for the other drivers. 4.6 N.B. Remember to keep a copy of the original files. 4.6 Michael Overthrow 4.6 • Rhapsody − Before entering complex music, fill a dummy line with your shortest notes. Now everything just lines up, even across five staves, so you never have to ‘nudge’ notes to and fro. But why does the Rhapsody manual lack a tutorial? I had typed in many pages of sheet music before guessing how to set the key and the automatic sharps! Nik Kelly, Liverpool. 4.6 • System modules versions − I have heard of a number of applications refusing to work because one of the modules contained in the !System application folder was out of date. A quick way to check the version numbers, even if the modules are not already loaded, is to open up the ‘!System.Modules’ directory (by double clicking on the ‘!System’ folder icon while holding the <shift> key down), and then to load each module into !Edit. Ignore all the [00][00], etc you should look for the text below: 4.6 CLib − Shared C Library 3.50 (19 Jul 1989) 4.6 Colour − Colour Selector 0.52 (26 Apr 1989) 4.6 FPEmulator − FPEmulator 2.80 (22 Feb 1989) 4.6 These are the latest official version numbers. Acorn have stressed that any other other releases are illegal copies and cannot be relied on. 4.6 Rick Sterry, Wakefield BBC Micro User Group 4.6 • Virus warning − In a recent message on the international UNIX-based networks, in the eunet. micros.acorn section, a Liverpool-based Archimedes owner announced the discovery of a virus. The virus resides in the !Boot file of applications and consists of an extra line: 4.6 RMEnsure Extend 0 RMRun <Obey$Dir>.ModName 4.6 and is followed by a commented-out hex <FF> character. 4.6 The module name ModName varies between MonitorRM, CheckMod, ExtendRM, OSextend, ColourRM, Fastmod, CodeRM, MemRM. The name of the module in the *MODULES list is always ‘Extend’ and is thus referred to as ‘The Extend Virus’. The module doesn’t do anything destructive but it is always possible that someone will modify it. The only present problem is that it takes 1k of RMA every time you double click on an application, eventually filling it up and crashing the machine. Of course, it also consumes sections of disc space, as it puts copies of the module and extended !Boot files on your discs, but this is pretty subtle and is likely to go unnoticed, (at first). 4.6 If an application doesn’t have a !Boot file to start with, the virus creates one. If all this makes hard disc owners a little nervous then they should get hold of a copy of !Watchdog, which is on Risc User’s program disc Vol 3 no 7. 4.6 Wakefield BBC Micro User Group 4.6 • Wiping SCSI discs − It’s not often that you want to remove all the files from a hard disc but with the advent of removable hard drives, it is becoming a more common requirement. To select all the files and delete them can take a huge amount of time if there are a lot of small files so it would probably be quicker to re-format the drive. If you are using an Oak Solutions’ SCSI interface then there is an even quicker way of doing it. Use their SCSIForm program and choose the <M> option to initialise the map and root of the disc. This simply re-writes the catalogue of the root directory to say that there are no files left on the disc. This is obviously very quick − but deadly − beware, there’s no way back. 4.6 Impression Hints and Tips 4.6 Here are a few more hints and tips mostly from the editor’s dabblings in preparing the magazine... 4.6 • Dashes − If you, like me, don’t like to see hyphens used where dashes should be used − i.e. in places like this − you will probably be sick and fed up of typing <alt-153>. (Note that the character in “alt-153” is a hyphen, just in case you weren’t aware of the difference.) If you are importing text into Impression, occurrences of ‘hyphen hyphen’ will be converted automatically by Impression into a long dash — see what I mean. Personally, I prefer the shorter one so what I have done is set up the abbreviation dictionary with ‘expand as you type’ and used an underline character to be turned into a dash. The only drawback is that it’s OK for things like the dashes earlier in this paragraph, but if, for example, you use dashes in phone numbers, as 0603−766592, the abbreviation technique does not work and you are back to <alt-153>. Anyone any other ideas? 4.6 • Find styles − If you want to find a style, get up the find/replace box with <ctrl-f4> and then click in the menu box to the right of the Find box and select the style you are looking for. This will come up as, say, “”. Type an “@” after this − which stands for “any text” − and then press <return>. This will highlight the whole of the first piece of text with that style or effect. Unfortunately, the facility to replace that style with another style is not yet working. If you do want to do any search and replace on the style names, export the text, with styles, and then use another WP such as !Edit to do the searching and replacing before returning it to Impression. 4.6 • Rogue effects − Someone sent me a file in which they had used a particular font which I did not have so when I loaded the file, Impression told me it was changing it to Trinity.medium. I did an edit- style and looked at all the style definitions to no avail. Eventually, I realised that it must have been used as an effect, so how was I to find it and eliminate it or change it to some font I did possess? Because the font had been changed to Trinity.medium (i.e. the BaseStyle font) I could not pick it out with a visual scan so the first idea was to change the BaseStyle to, say, Zapf.Dingbats so that anything which was in a different font was obviously an effect or a style. Unfortunately, this didn’t reveal the offending effect. At this point, I became convinced that I had a non-existent, un-removable effect, i.e. a bug in Impres sion. So I sent the offending file to CC who informed me that the particular effect WAS in the text and they also showed me how to locate it... as follows... 4.6 (Actually, the reason that I couldn’t find the effect was that I had already gone through the document adding extra styles and had covered this rogue font-change effect with a font-change style of my own. In other words, the style, because it was applied later than the effect, took precedence.) 4.6 • Finding effects − In the same way that you can find styles (see above) you can also find effects as long as you tell Impression that you want effects to be shown on the style menu. To do this, locate the file “UK” in the Impression “Resources” directory. Load it into !Edit and find “Cnf1:” and change it to “Cnf1:E” − that’s a one, not a letter “l”. Save the file and shut down and re-start Impression. You then will have effects on your style menus and search on {“effectname” }@, as explained above. 4.6 • Fast search and replace − There are a couple of very useful keyboard short-cuts not documented in the manual which speed up the search and replace. When the “text found” box is on screen, <ctrl-R> does a “Replace” and <ctrl-N> moves to the “Next”. 4.6 • Keyboard short-cuts − Apart from the ones listed on pages 119ff of the Impression manual, here are a few more: (some are mentioned on the menu, but not in manual) 4.6 <ctrl-shift-D> go to chapter 4.6 <ctrl-shift-H> produces a bullet i.e. a “•”. 4.6 <ctrl-shift-I> also produces a bullet i.e. a “•”! 4.6 <ctrl-shift-J> produces superscript 4.6 <ctrl-shift-K> produces subscript 4.6 <ctrl-shift-T> save text story 4.6 • Page number justification problems − Some of you may have had difficulty getting correct centring or right justification of page numbers on footers. This is corrected in version 2.09 − well, almost! The footers on right hand pages were wrong last month, when I was using version 2.05, (in fact I didn’t even notice!) and the footers on the left hand pages would have been wrong this month (with 2.09) if I had not found a way round it. If you try to have left aligned page number with a right tabbed piece of text, the text suffers a left shift. I’ve solved it for now by splitting the footer text into two separate frames, one left aligned and the other right aligned. It’s messy, but it works. A 4.6 4.6 4.6 Hints and Tips 4.6 4.6 4.6 Oak 4.6 New 4.6 4.6 Colton 4.6 From 4.5 page 14 4.6 4.6 Comment Column 4.6 • “Buyer beware” − Here is a salutary tale with a (relatively) happy ending. Graham Collins, one of our subscribers, bought a 1M memory upgrade for his A3000 from Norwich Computer Services. Some time later (but less than a year) the computer started going wrong so he took it to Beebug Ltd from whom he had bought the computer. They took it in, fixed it for him and charged him £45. The trouble was that when Graham looked at the service report, he found they had “re-soldered loose connections on the ram board”. He felt that this was unfair because the ram board was still under warranty. However, from Beebug’s point of view, they had taken in a computer and repaired it in good faith and, indeed, had only charged £45 which is their minimum charge for repairing a computer. In one sense, because it was a fault on the ram board, it was Morley’s responsibility, but why should they pay £45 since they could have repaired the board at very little cost to themselves. Should N.C.S. be responsible for the £45? Hardly, because all we did was supply a product from a third party. We do not feel that it is our responsibility to test the items that go through our hands. 4.6 So, who paid the £45? Well, no one, but Morley are going to upgrade the 1M to 3M and not charge Graham the full upgrade charge − well done, Morley. 4.6 What is the moral of this story? Should Beebug have informed Graham as soon as they found it was the memory upgrade that was at fault? Even if they had, they would presumably still have had to charge him their £45 minimum charge. I don’t really think anyone is to blame but it does suggest that you need to be careful when combining hardware bought from different sources. The problem could have been avoided if Graham had taken the memory board out when the computer went wrong so he could see where the problem lay. Mind you, having said that, we have had memory boards returned to us apparently not working and then found that they worked OK on other computers. The problem lay with a timing fault such that the tolerance of the customer’s computer and the tolerance of the memory board meant that the two were incompatible. Buyer beware! 4.6 • Canon BJ10e − I’ve recently bought a Canon BJ10e from EFF who gave me very prompt service. The printer itself is quite petite, about the same size as an A4 pad, but thicker, weighing in at a paltry 1.8 kg. I ordered mine in the beige, there is also the option of having it in black, I suppose to co-ordinate it with the black lap tops around. As a result of the lightweight construction, the lid and some of the fixtures appear to be flimsy and I doubt whether they would stand up to the rigours of a commercial or educational environment. 4.6 The print quality is very good, the BJ10e uses a 36 x 48 dot matrix for text and up to 360 dpi for bit-mapped graphics. I have yet to use any proper ‘inkjet’ paper, which gives much better results. The most noticeable aspect of this printer, is that it is virtually silent! I also bought the sheet feeder, which takes about 30 sheets of A4, with a flap near the bottom for envelopes and thin card. The construction of it is also very plasticky and the only problem that I have had with it, is that it is has a thickness adjustment which needs to be set properly or else it ejects an extra sheet of blank paper after every printed sheet. 4.6 The printer manual does not give the full details of the control and escape codes, which are useful if you need to customise the First Word Plus driver for instance. It took me a long time to get it to work properly with the printer driver and First Word Plus. In my opinion the documentation sent out with the printer driver is inadequate. I have detailed my findings in the hope that it may help others. 4.6 BJ10e d.i.p. switch setup 4.6 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 4.6 on* off off off off on off off on on 4.6 *only with an sheet feeder 4.6 *ignore is set to 0 on the Archimedes 4.6 This set up works equally well with First Word Plus and the printer driver. The RISC-OS printer driver should be installed for all printing, including First Word Plus. I’ve also found that the margins need to be set, to show the correct printable area, for programs such as !Draw and these are: Top: 0.2 mm Bottom: 12.6 mm 4.6 Left: 0.0 mm Right: 6.9 mm 4.6 Note that these values (should) hold true for all paper sizes, as they define the margin. 4.6 Even with the correct adjustment of the thickness control, I found the printer ejected an extra (blank) sheet after a graphics dump from !Draw and !Paint. It is more annoying than serious, however. 4.6 The running cost of the printer is dependent mainly on the type of paper you intend to use and the frequency of screendumps and the like. I am using standard 80 g/m photocopier paper, which costs about £7.00 for 500 sheets (ream). The ink cartridge/ head costs £20; I have printed about 600 sheets of mixed DTP and standard printer font outputs, where I have found the results beginning to ‘band’, noticeable with large expanses of black, although this hasn’t seemed to affect normal or outline font print-outs. I estimate the cost per page to be about 4.5p, not too bad, if you can’t afford or justify a laser printer. 4.6 Newsflash − Canon have decided to drop the price and include the sheetfeeder for free. I have seen prices as low as £320 inclusive; check out the computer magazines for up-to-date prices. I paid £420 for mine, so at £320, it’s very good value in my opinion. Chun Wong, Sheffield. 4.6 • Dealer Problems − I was interested to read David Hazel’s letter, in the November issue, regarding dealer problems and Acorn computers. Now that Acorn have “sold on” the development of their RISC technology to the newly formed ARM company, their dependence on the sales and marketing of high quality products is even more significant for all users. 4.6 As a representative of one of Acorn’s biggest single group of customers, I can suggest several issues which they might like to consider. 4.6 Generally, we are satisfied with the service that our dealers offer. Equally, we are delighted with the performance of the machines them selves and we are confident that we have made the right decision in encouraging our schools to buy RISC technology. However, there are difficulties with the “peripherals” supplied with the machine which create a lot of extra work for dealers and other support agencies, such as our Microtechnology Centre, which are often unnecessary and reflect Acorn’s inability to perceive the problems of ordinary end users no matter how trivial they may be to more technically proficient users. 4.6 For example, the Applications Discs do not contain the latest printer drivers (which makes programs such as Draw or Folio much slower to print and therefore much less attractive) and contain no copies of the Integrex or Laserjet drivers. In addition, they are structured in a such a way that it is impossible to just “switch on and go”. Problems arise with incomprehensible messages about !System and modules (whatever they may be), an apparent lack of memory (e.g. copies of First Word Plus with no maximum wimpslot size), a small or non existent font cache, an obsolete font system, apparently endless disc swops when saving or copying files (even from a RAM disc) or loading programs from a new disc which has not had the necessary extras, such as !System and !Fonts added to it (and sometimes even when they have been) and printers which print gobbledegook because the drivers are not configured correctly. Whilst answers to some of these problems may be found in the guides, there is no starter booklet which provides immediate help with these sort of problems. They are the ones which arise as soon as the user is familiar with the environment itself. In addition, having run an educational hotline, Acorn now refuse to answer (as in “we know but we won’t tell you”) schools’ questions when contacted. You can imagine the reaction to that from schools which have bought anything up to 120 Archimedes! 4.6 Whilst we offer a very full support service for our schools which will help them solve these and, hopefully, all the other problems which may arise, Acorn themselves could make life a lot easier for us and our dealers and give greater customer satisfaction for all users if thought more carefully about these potential user difficulties. For example, they could provide much more carefully structured Applications discs and produced a Beginners’ Guide with the machine, dealing with just these sort of issues. I suspect the source material exists in many LEAs already. Another useful addition might be fact sheets with answers to the other more commonly asked questions, from the days when they did run an educational hotline for schools, which could be supplied on request and made available to support agencies for duplication and distribution. 4.6 With regard to the outline font manager, it should be made available with the machine or, at least, Acorn should supply more information with the machine about this most essential upgrade. At present, end users are paying for it over and over again within the cost of each program they buy which provides it; something that is also unfair on the software houses themselves. 4.6 Acorn may claim that they are now listening to customers but the fact is that we and many others have been saying these sort of things for what seems a very long time. 4.6 I suspect that a major new market which is opening up, consists of those potential customers (usually computer illiterate from a non games playing background) who have never bothered with computers before but are now encouraged to the view that, maybe, they are worth considering after all. The critical factor for the users is not the the speed of the machine, the quality of the graphics, the relative merits of different items of software or even small price differences. It is the simplicity with which they can get started on useful tasks such as word processing and drawing. At present, on Acorn computers, it is not as simple as it could be for reasons that are nothing to do with the machine itself but everything to do with a lack of consideration for the requirements of this sort of end user. 4.6 Finally, if Acorn want a suggestion for a technical development, useful for the (majority of) users who do not have a hard-disc, they should look at ways of increasing the storage capacity of their floppy drives to 1.2mb. 4.6 Martyn Wilson, Inspector for Technology, Hampshire LEA 4.6 • Joystick interfaces − RTFM kindly rang from Jersey to say that although their Joystick interface voids the A3000’s warranty, it does not void the warranty on the A400/1 series. I dislike internal ‘dongles’, so I admitted I’d already bought one from for their rival. 4.6 The Serial Port’s gadget is packed into a neat breakout box with Archimedes and printer sockets at the ends, two joystick 9-pin D-types and a printer / games switch on top. My stiff printer cable pulled it off the Archimedes, so I made a half-metre ribbon cable to bring it to my desk at front-left. 4.6 Their Tutor program prompted for stick actions and each matching keystroke and made a command file for the joystick Rmodule. Their compiler took text-files with simple keywords for stick actions, flags and logic. Examples ranged from Alerion to Zarch. 4.6 The Rmodule stayed active through games, BASIC and Rhapsody. My early version lacks <shift-Fn>, <ctrl-Fn> and <shift-ctrl-Fn>, as used in View, Edit or Rhapsody, but took all the regular keys. 4.6 It’s fun. It’s also given me 10 switches without fuss or I/O podule. I’m building a low-tech ‘Knob-box’ for it, with <x>, <y>, <z> look_> _shift and 3 bits to select Eye or 1-6 objects. (I reproduce this last sentence in the hope that it means something to someone! Ed.) Nik Kelly, Liverpool. 4.6 • Schema − Just a brief note on this acclaimed spreadsheet. A friend, who has just bought Schema, invited me to try it on his A440. My first reaction to its speed, presentation and the facilities, such as functions and macros, was that it was an excellent program. However, I very quickly found a glaring bug: 4.6 Inserting extra rows and/or columns in the middle of an existing sheet results in replicated formulae having ‘holes’ in the new parts and incorrect references after the insertions. 4.6 I then found that changing a column of figures on a ‘what if’ basis resulted in formulae being changed into text and hence failing to recalculate. My trial run was done on a very simple sheet so changing the text back was very easy but it should not be necessary. The person whose machine and program I was using has to work with real and sometimes very large spreadsheets − correcting formulae is not on for him! 4.6 I have used PC packages such as Lotus 1-2-3 and Symphony, to name but half a dozen, so I have a fair idea what these things should do. I know that the above named products cost about three times as much as Schema but there are some which cost only half, such as Quattro, which can at least give a guide to the standards expected. 4.6 Having said all that, I did like Schema and will consider buying it when the above mentioned faults have been corrected. I would also ask the writer(s) of the program if they can arrange for only the marked block to be printed without the column letters and row numbers. One thing I would like to see in a spreadsheet is the ability to select only a few, non adjacent, rows for printing (or perhaps I missed how to do that in the short time I had for play!). Dave Livsey, Exeter. 4.6 I passed these comments on to Dave Clare who told us they were aware of the problems and that they will be cured in the next release of Schema which will be supplied to all registered users free of charge (Minerva, are you listening?). Also, they only occur after inserting new rows or columns and copying into that area, not if you copy or move a block of data or formulae. The point about printing labels is already catered for − <shift-f7> turns off labels and <shift-f6> turns off the grid as explained in the manual and shown on the Default menu of the main Schema Sheet menu. Dave Livsey’s last point is being taken into account for future releases of Schema. For the moment, the only way is to copy the relevant areas to a blank part of the sheet and print the marked block. Ed. 4.6 • Musical Macs − I would like to pick up on a point raised by Brian Cowan in his Hardware Column (Issue 4.5 p22) where he states that, in his view, since the advent of Impression 2, there is no need for Archimedes owners to feel envious of Mac owners. This may be true of DTP but, unlike the Archimedes, the Mac has excellent support for musical applications, particularly professional Midi sequencing and direct to hard disc audio recording. 4.6 With the release (at last) of Inspiration, Pandora’s excellent Midi sequencer, (I disagreed with the poor review it got in Risc User − and with the fact that they thought Studio 24 Plus was good.) we now have a sequencer which competes with the best on the Mac. There are still a few features missing, though those it has are well implemented. It has very powerful editing facilities, though it has no scorewriting abilities. However, because it saves its files in the Midi Files Standard, as does Rhapsody, it should, in theory, be possible to use Rhapsody and Inspiration together. 4.6 However, it is the hardware support that puts the Mac far ahead of the current Archimedes situation. For example, Digidesign’s ‘SoundTools’ expansion card for the Mac provides CD quality sampling and playback (much like Armadillo’s A616). However, SoundTools has on-board memory and intelligence enabling it to get on with the business of sampling/ playback whilst the host Mac can be running a Midi Sequencer, which in turn can instruct SoundTools as to which samples to play, and when. The multi-tasking Archimedes cannot do this − the A616 takes over the Archimedes as a single task, preoccupying the processor and using the main memory. 4.6 Then there are DSP cards. A Digital Signal Processing chip is a very fast number cruncher (some are rated as high as 80 MIPs) dedicated to... processing signals. They can do all sorts of things to digitised sound (time delays, pitch changing, dynamic control, digital filtering, etc), all in real time. 4.6 For people who still think that 4 MIPs is fast, Symetrix claim that their recently launched DPR44 4-track digital recording and editing system uses a processor running at 400 MIPs! It won’t be cheap, though. 4.6 (Incidentally, for those of you still wary of dongles, I have two dongles dangling off the back of my 410 − Impression and Inspiration − and have not experienced any problems so far.) 4.6 The prospect of a Mac emulator sounds interesting, though you’d need a pretty hefty ARM to emulate a 25MHz 68030 Mac 2. However, if you could also hook up Mac Nubus expansion cards... 4.6 I am not particularly impressed with emulators in general. You get accustomed to the native speed of any machine and emulation of other environments will always be slower than native mode operation. 4.6 I’ve had an Archimedes now for three years and, as a programmer’s machine, I still think it’s the bee’s knees but I’d like to see the Archimedes take on the Mac market in the music field the way that it has in the DTP field. David Lenthal. 4.6 • Starfleet encounter − Alan Highet gave a very unfavourable impression of the program which was, I think, a bit unfair. (The author of the program writes.) 4.6 Alan criticises the lack of a ‘one player versus the computer’ option. It results from the complexity of the gameplay which makes it quite difficult (impossible?) to implement a good computer opponent. In any case, isn’t it nicer to play with a fellow human being? Starfleet Encounter has been designed to administrate the gameplay; you can regard it as a kind of board game with a computerized referee and that’s how you have to judge it − even if there is an arcade action part. 4.6 Alan’s next point of criticism is that the players can’t hide their plans from the opponent. This is not really true. The facility to execute pre-programmed command macros is one mechanism to do so (these sequences can be written before the players meet and can then be loaded in). Secondly, who can deny that chess-players, for example, can hide their plans from each other? 4.6 That Alan doesn’t like the method of programming the ships, is no surprise to me. It really is somewhat difficult! This may be true if you make use of all the programming features (functions, if-else-endif, variables) but restrict yourself to the basic facilities and it’s absolutely simple. 4.6 Finally, it is obvious that the simultaneous use of the keyboard by two persons is not ideal, but how can Alan say it doesn’t work? I play Starfleet Encounter quite often and I can assure you: it works! 4.6 Starfleet Encounter is available for £10, sent in by cheque to Daniel Tamberg Software, Landgrafenstr. 9, 1000 Berlin 30, Germany. This includes a 28K on-disc manual and several example sequ-ences. Daniel Tamberg, Berlin. A 4.6 4.6 Design Concept 4.6 New 4.6 4.6 Atomwide 4.6 From 4.5 page 26 4.6 But please can you strip in a change? The £275 at the end of the first paragraph should be changed to £199. OK? 4.6 4.6 Computer Concepts 4.6 New 4.6 4.6 Computer Concepts 4.6 New 4.6 4.6 PipeLine 4.6 Gerald Fitton 4.6 Thanks once again to all who have written to me. As I write, I have half a dozen discs which I have not yet returned; they will be returned as soon as possible. You are getting more ambitious in your uses of PipeDream and the quality of the applications which you send me are excellent. This increased complexity means that it takes me a bit longer to understand exactly what you have done and, consequently, there is a delay in returning your disc to you − especially since I give priority to letters asking for help. 4.6 Schema vs PipeDream 4.6 I have been sent spreadsheet benchmark comparisons between V 3.14 of PipeDream and V 1.03 of Schema. I don’t have Schema myself so I am unable to test out the claims but they come from a source I believe to be honest. Possibly a new version of Schema has been issued since the tests were done so these figures may be out of date, however, here are some of the results. 4.6 Pipedream is about five time faster at manual recalculation. PipeDream loads its own format files in about two thirds of the time Schema takes for its internal format files. Both will load the universal CSV files but Schema takes about 20 to 30 times longer to do so. PipeDream is about four times faster than Schema when scrolling around the spread sheet. Printing from PipeDream is 2 to 3 times faster than Schema. PipeDream uses about half the memory that Schema does and PipeDream uses memory dynamically (it gives up what it doesn’t need). Schema sorts in about the same time as PipeDream but PipeDream updates cell references whilst sorting. The version of Schema tested has a bug in the ‘Insert row’; this bug causes cell references to be upgraded incorrectly. 4.6 Of course, I’m sure that Schema will be upgraded and will improve its performance. It does have some facilities such as built in charts that PipeDream handles another way (e.g. by exporting data as CSV files to, say, Presenter or GraphBox). Against that, PipeDream is more than just a spreadsheet and has many facilities that Schema doesn’t. I think it unlikely that anyone with PipeDream will want to add Schema to their range of packages. If you have a different opinion or if you have benchmarks which contradict the figures I have quoted then please write to me so that I can present the other side of the story. 4.6 PipeDream on the Z88 4.6 Since I mentioned that I have a Z88, I have received half a dozen letters specifically about linking the Archimedes to the Z88. Perhaps the forum for such comment is through the PipeDream User Group. The Pipedream User Group has a Newsletter and provides some technical support. Write to me (at Abacus Training − address on the back inside cover) if you’re interested in joining. 4.6 Transferring files 4.6 PipeDream 1 was View Professional on the BBC Micro and was called PipeDream on the Z88. View Professional came first and was written by Mark Colton in 6502 code (the CPU of the BBC Micro). Mark translated this program into Z80 code for the Cambridge Z88. Robert Macmillan (with others) re-wrote the code in the high level C language and compiled it for use under MS-DOS (for the PC range) and Arthur; this version became known as PipeDream 2. PipeDream 3 is the multitasking, RISC-OS version and was released at the Acorn User show on 21st August 1989; I am told that the master disc was ‘minted’ at 6 am that day! All versions of PipeDream are upgrade compatible, so you can safely create a PipeDream file on a Z88 or in View Professional knowing that it will run on a PC under MS-DOS or on the Archimedes. PipeDream files created on a PC under MS-DOS will run on the Archimedes under RISC-OS. 4.6 You have to be a bit more careful working backwards from the Archimedes to the Z88 or to a PC because there are some features available in PipeDream 3 on the Archimedes that are absent from PipeDream 1 or 2 but, so long as you are careful, your formulae will work. Of course, text files in the system font have no downward compatibility problems. 4.6 Manual recalculation 4.6 Some sheets or databases with many functions littering the document are of the type where you need a lot of data entry before you need the result of a recalculation. As an example, I add about a dozen names and addresses to the PipeLine database at a time before printing labels etc. If you use <ctrl-FO> and change the recalculation from auto to manual, you will find that this speeds up data entry. Of course, you can change it back or use <ctrl-A> to force a recalculation when you’ve finished. 4.6 Mode 0 4.6 If you drop into mode 0 before doing a massive sort operation then you will save about 20% of the sort time. 4.6 Default colours 4.6 The bug, ‘Incorrect number of output bits − printing cancelled’ will materialise if you use a different colour scheme from the PipeDream default. I have now been asked what the default colours are by some of you who have lost the original somewhere! Use <ctrl-FR> and then, from the top, the colours are 7, 0, 2, 11, 14, 11, 4. It seems that it is the background colour which causes the problem rather than the other colours (but you might know better!) so make sure you use the default. 4.6 Printing sprites 4.6 An earlier bug was that PipeDream would not print sprites correctly from non square pixel modes (see Maurice Edmundson’s article in the May 1990 Archive). This has been fixed sometime around version 3.1. I am still getting letters from people with this problem who have not yet upgraded. If you have a version earlier than 3.10, you should upgrade. If you have 3.10 or later then there is no urgency about upgrading; the latest version is 3.14. 4.6 StartUp 4.6 PipeDream is a wonderfully integrated package which can be used as a wordprocessor, spreadsheet and database all within the same document. Because it can do all these things at once, its versatility makes setting up a document seem more complicated than it really is. 4.6 If what you want to do in one document is mainly word-processing with a few of the spreadsheet facilities included, it is better to set the file-options differently from one which is to be used mainly as a spreadsheet. In particular, unnecessary difficulties about such things as whether cells expect their first entry to be left aligned text or right aligned numerical values arise because the file-options have been inappropriately set. 4.6 Almost any set of options can be preset by using a macro − but it is unfortunate for the beginner that macros are a PipeDream facility best tackled later rather than earlier in the learning process. Robert Macmillan has provided a couple of macros for the Archive monthly disc (also on the April 1991 PipeLine disc), one where the options are more suited to a Spreadsheet (called new_ sheet) and one more suited to a wordprocessor (called new_word). To run a macro, all you need to do is double click <select> on the macro and it will run, carrying out all its functions. Try the new_word macro and you will have a ‘default’ word processor document. Double click on new_ sheet and you will have a default spreadsheet. You may then change the options further if you wish but you will not be able to save your new option set as a changed new_word or new_sheet macro. To change the macro you need to learn a range of ‘Editing macro’ skills. 4.6 You may have a particular requirement for a ‘startup macro’ which uses a set of file-options that you like but, as yet, you haven’t the skill to write it. If so, send me a formatted disc (plus return postage and a self addressed sticky label) with an example file, set up as you want it, and I’ll send you back the disc with a macro that will do the job for you. 4.6 Iteration 4.6 Malcolm Brown has sent me an interesting example of iteration which he has used to solve a financial problem. The problem is to calculate the size of loan repayments (e.g. hire purchase payments) knowing the size of the loan, the interest rate and the repayment period. It is on the Archive monthly disc and will be on the April 1991 PipeLine disc. PipeDream does have financial functions (have a look at pages 157 to 160 of the User Guide) which could have been used to solve Malcolm’s problem more elegantly. However, I like his solution because I believe it to be an example of the use of PipeDream’s iteration facility which is neither too simple to be useful nor too difficult to understand what is happening. 4.6 Generally, mathematicians use iteration only if a formula contains the wanted variable ‘implicitly’ in such a way that the formula can not be ‘inverted’ (solved) to obtain an ‘explicit’ solution for the wanted variable. Quadratic equations can be solved ‘explicitly’ but quintics (fifth power equations) and many ‘real life’ mathematical problems can not. If you send me a solution to Malcolm’s ‘Amortisation Annuity’ problem using PipeDream’s built in financial functions, I will include it on one of the quarterly PipeLine discs (and you will get a free PipeLine disc or a refund if you’ve paid already). The financial functions of PipeDream will allow you to create a ‘repayment schedule’ (showing just how much is still owed at any time). 4.6 Overseas PipeLine charges 4.6 Many of you have an annual subscription to the quarterly PipeLine series which ‘runs out’ with the April 1991 disc. The UK renewal is £18 and, to make it easy to calculate, I’ve decided that all overseas renewals will be £20. The extra £2 covers postage to the EC and, since I enjoy communicating with distant lands, I think I’ll subsidise subscribers that are further away. 4.6 April 1991 PipeLine disc 4.6 Many of you have written in approving of the review on the January 1991 PipeLine disc which demonstrated how !FontFX could be used with !Draw to illustrate a PipeDream document. Recently, I have been having trouble using Acorn’s !Draw to create my illustrations because I added a lot more fonts to my !Fonts directory. Now I have an answer to the problem − !Draw1½. This is available on Shareware 34 and on the April 1991 PipeLine disc. !Draw1½ has all the features of !Draw and many more. An explanation of how it works, illustrations of some of its features and how well it integrates with PipeDream will be included. !Draw1½, unlike Acorn’s !Draw and the current version of Poster, will accept more than 100 fonts. 4.6 Puzzles 4.6 Another item on the January 1991 PipeLine disc which has been well received is the Puzzles. If you have one which you would like to contribute then, if it is suitable, I shall be most pleased to include it on a PipeLine disc. 4.6 Interword files 4.6 Help! Does anyone know the best way or have any advise about importing Interword files into PipeDream? 4.6 Amstrad CPC and PCW 4.6 Help! Has anyone any advice on serial port transfer of ASCII text from Locoscript on an Amstrad to PipeDream? 4.6 In conclusion 4.6 Thank you for all your contributions. Please be patient if you don’t get an instant reply. Abacus Training is not my full-time job (even though my wife might say differently!); I teach a whole range of different subjects at the local College of Further Education. So you see, I have to fit PipeLine enquiries into the cracks between my College duties! A 4.6 4.6 Contact Box 4.6 • Austrian Archimedes User Group will they hold their next meeting in Vienna on March 22nd. For details, contact Mr T Halbritter, Laa 1, A- 3040 Neulengbach. Phone 02772−4654 (home) or 0222−80125−232 (office). 4.6 • Glossop Computer Club meets every Monday at Oddfellows Hall, 69 High Street West and has a very strong Archimedes contingent. For details, contact John Dearn on 0457−862743 or Alan Crofton on 061−436−4658. 4.6 • Wakefield BBC User Group has meetings which are relevant to Archimedes on 3rd April, 1st May and 3rd July at Holmfield House, Thornes Park, Wakefield. Details from Chris Hughes on 0924−379778 or Rick Sterry on 0924−255515. 4.6 • Warrington − Any Archimedes users or user groups, please contact Robin Melling, 80 Severn Road, Culcheth, Warrington WA3 5EB. A 4.6 4.6 Apricote 4.6 From 4.5 page 6 4.6 4.6 Coroutines in C 4.6 David McQuillan 4.6 Coroutines can be a powerful programming technique and I shall show how to implement them in Acorn ANSI C. 4.6 “Hmm, yes it seems like it’ll be OK. It would be much better if it had nested include files and macros in the input. Could you put a header with a page number on each page output?” 4.6 If you have done any amount of programming you know the problem. It would be easy to write the input if it called the main program passing each new line. The output would be easy if it called the main program to get each line. However, they both have to be subroutines of the main program − it seems like it is time for a whole raft of extra static variables or structures containing state variables to be held between calls. As more facilities go in, it all becomes more and more rickety, unintelligible and error prone. 4.6 Coroutines to the rescue 4.6 Coroutines enable you to write a subroutine as if it were the main routine. The implementation here works only with Acorn ANSI C release 3, not release 2. I don’t know what changes Beebug ISO C would need. I do know of one machine on which coroutines are quite impossible without rewriting the operating system but, normally, the concept can be implemented fairly easily using assembler. 4.6 Another major use for coroutines is to implement simulations. There is a famous example by Knuth in his book ‘Fundamental Algorithms’, in which he simulates the elevator system in the California Institute of Technology. 4.6 Coroutines are built into Simula and BCPL and, implicitly, into Smalltalk and Lisp − especially the Scheme dialect. 4.6 Program description 4.6 The program has two coroutines, input and output, which call each other. The main line does nothing except set it all in motion. The input coroutine generates the fibonacci numbers and the output coroutine prints each number and how much more it is than the last number. It is all fairly simple to do otherwise, coroutines only prove themselves when the going gets rough. 4.6 A coroutine is called by calling co_resume passing a pointer to a coroutine structure and a value. The coroutine called will return from a co_resume call it has made previously and the value will be the return value. Each coroutine executes on it own stack. The implementation here has void * type values so structures can be passed from coroutine to coroutine. 4.6 There is a little question as to which coroutine it is best to start first. I prefer a demand driven approach starting the output and then requesting data with NULL indicating the end of data. However, it is just as reasonable to follow a data driven approach, starting the input and pushing the data to the output. This is just an example of how democratic coroutines can be. 4.6 The main program does all the setup. co_initialise must be called once at the beginning so the main program can be thought of as a coroutine. co_ create must be called for every other coroutine. The stack size should be set to some reasonable figure that I can’t advise on easily, 560 bytes are added by co_create for a chunk at the base of each stack. 4.6 The first call to co_resume for a coroutine passes the parameter as a straightforward parameter to the associated procedure. Every subsequent call returns from a co_resume call within the coroutine. An error is generated if any coroutine tries to do a straightforward return. 4.6 So there you are, E=mc2 and don’t blame me if it all blows up. 4.6 /* > coroutine 4.6 * 4.6 * An example of coroutines. 4.6 * 4.6 * Works on Acorn ANSI C version 3. 4.6 * Does not work with ANSI C version 2 − tried and 4.6 * it looks hard without using assembler. 4.6 * Don’t know what’s needed for Beebug ISO C. 4.6 * 4.6 * Code is very non-portable. 4.6 * 4.6 * No responsibility accepted if you come a cropper using 4.6 * the code. In particular I have not tried stack extension 4.6 * and interrupts with it. 4.6 * 4.6 * (c) put in Public Domain by David McQuillan Jan 1991 4.6 */ 4.6 4.6 #include <setjmp.h> 4.6 #include <stdio.h> 4.6 #include <stdlib.h> 4.6 #include <string.h> 4.6 4.6 /* coroutine header */ 4.6 4.6 typedef struct {env ; 4.6 int *stack; 4.6 } coroutine_t; 4.6 4.6 typedef void co_procedure_t(void *parameter); 4.6 4.6 void co_initialise(coroutine_t *coroutine); 4.6 void co_create(coroutine_t *coroutine, size_t stack_size,co_procedure_t *proc); 4.6 void *co_resume(coroutine_t *coroutine, void *parameter); 4.6 4.6 /******************************/ 4.6 /* start of example program */ 4.6 4.6 static coroutine_t main_coroutine,input_coroutine,output_coroutine; 4.6 static co_procedure_t input, output; 4.6 4.6 /* main routine creating + controlling */ 4.6 int main(void) 4.6 {printf(“main\n”) ; 4.6 co_initialise(&main_coroutine); 4.6 co_create(&input_coroutine, 2000, &input); 4.6 co_create(&output_coroutine, 2000, &output); 4.6 co_resume(&output_coroutine, NULL); 4.6 printf(“end main\n”); 4.6 4.6 return 0; 4.6 } 4.6 4.6 /* input coroutine */ 4.6 static void input(void *parameter) 4.6 {i0 , i1, i2; 4.6 4.6 printf(“input generates fibonacci < 100\n”); 4.6 4.6 i1 = 0; 4.6 printf(“input initial %d\n”,i1); 4.6 co_resume(&output_coroutine, &i1); 4.6 for (i2 = 1; i2 < 100; i0=i1, i1=i2, i2=i0+i1) 4.6 {%d\n“ , i2); 4.6 co_resume(&output_coroutine, &i2); 4.6 } 4.6 4.6 co_resume(&output_coroutine, NULL); 4.6 } 4.6 4.6 /* output coroutine */ 4.6 4.6 static void output(void *parameter) 4.6 {*value ; 4.6 4.6 printf(“output number, difference from last\n”); 4.6 4.6 if ((value = co_resume(&input_ coroutine, NULL)) != NULL) 4.6 {*value ; 4.6 int this; 4.6 4.6 printf(“output initial %d\n”, last); 4.6 4.6 while ((value = co_resume (&input_coroutine,NULL)) != NULL) 4.6 {*value ; 4.6 4.6 printf(“output %d %d\n”, this, this-last); 4.6 last = this; 4.6 } 4.6 } 4.6 co_resume(&main_coroutine, NULL); 4.6 } 4.6 4.6 /* end of example program */ 4.6 /****************************/ 4.6 4.6 /* 4.6 * Library routines for coroutine_t objects. 4.6 */ 4.6 4.6 /* _kernel stuff */ 4.6 4.6 #define STACK_DISP 0x230 4.6 #define JMP_SL 8 4.6 #define JMP_FP 6 4.6 #define JMP_SP 7 4.6 #define JMP_LR 9 4.6 4.6 #define V3_FP_MASK 0x80000000 4.6 #define SC_NEXT 1 4.6 #define SC_PREV 2 4.6 #define SC_SIZE 3 4.6 4.6 /* Resume a coroutine. */ 4.6 /* coroutine may be current coroutine */ 4.6 4.6 static coroutine_t *co_current = NULL; 4.6 static void *co_parameter = NULL; 4.6 4.6 void *co_resume(coroutine_t *coroutine, void *parameter) 4.6 {0 ) 4.6 {coroutine ; 4.6 co_parameter = parameter; 4.6 longjmp(coroutine->env, 1); 4.6 } 4.6 return co_parameter; 4.6 } 4.6 4.6 /* Initialise coroutine handling */ 4.6 /* Establish the ‘mainline’ coroutine */ 4.6 4.6 void co_initialise(coroutine_t *coroutine) 4.6 {setjmp(coroutine->env) ; 4.6 coroutine->stack = (int *) (coroutine->env[JMP_SL]-STACK_DISP); 4.6 co_current = coroutine; 4.6 } 4.6 4.6 /* coroutine starter for co_create */ 4.6 static coroutine_t *co_starter; 4.6 static co_procedure_t *co_start _proc; 4.6 4.6 static void co_start(void) 4.6 {co_start_proc ; 4.6 (*proc)(co_resume(co_starter, NULL)); 4.6 fprintf(stderr, “Exit from coroutine\n”); 4.6 exit(1); 4.6 } 4.6 4.6 /* Create coroutine and start executing. */ 4.6 void co_create( 4.6 coroutine_t *coroutine, 4.6 size_t stack_size, 4.6 co_procedure_t *proc ) 4.6 {*stack ; 4.6 4.6 /* Put STACK_DISP space at beginning of stack */ 4.6 /* Do some trial+error initialisation! */ 4.6 4.6 if ((stack = (int *)malloc(STACK_DISP+stack_size)) == NULL) 4.6 {fails\n“) ; 4.6 exit(1); 4.6 } 4.6 4.6 memcpy(stack, co_current->stack, STACK_DISP); 4.6 4.6 stack[SC_NEXT] = NULL; 4.6 stack[SC_PREV] = NULL; 4.6 stack[SC_SIZE] = (int)(STACK_ DISP+stack_size); 4.6 4.6 setjmp(coroutine->env); 4.6 coroutine->env[JMP_SL] = (int) stack+STACK_DISP; 4.6 coroutine->env[JMP_SP] = (int) stack+STACK_DISP+stack_size; 4.6 coroutine->env[JMP_LR] = (int)co_ start; 4.6 coroutine->stack = stack; 4.6 4.6 co_start_proc = proc; 4.6 4.6 co_starter = co_current; 4.6 co_resume(coroutine, NULL); 4.6 } A 4.6 4.6 Language Column 4.6 David Wild 4.6 I was very interested to see the reports of new languages in the February issue of Archive but rather disappointed to see that Acorn have removed several from their list. While arguing about which language is best is unlikely to be profitable, there can be no doubt that the availability of a variety of languages helps to retain the interest of the computer users and, eventually, lead to progress. 4.6 It isn’t always easy to see why anyone should want to use any particular language against another. The drive to invent Forth, for instance, came from the need to write programs to control the movements of a telescope. The particular technology meant that concise programs were needed, but most people didn’t want to learn machine code. It may be that the decline in interest in Forth over the past few years has come because of the easy availability of compilers on micro-computers. 4.6 Faced with a choice of BASIC, ‘C’, Pascal and Fortran as a minimum, we tend to forget just how recent this situation is. Five years ago, I was working with a project planning program, on a PC, which turned out to have been written in compiled BASIC. When I asked the people responsible why they had chosen BASIC they said that, at the time the programs were written, it was the only reliable compiler that was available. So far as I know, the programs have now been rewritten using one of the more modern compilers but it did emphasise that a language like BASIC, for all its limitations in the Microsoft form (no procedures or multi-line functions) could be used for programs which would sell, and sell repeatedly, at prices in excess of £1000 per copy. 4.6 I recently received, for review, a copy of a new language called “Charm”. I shall have more to say about this in the next issue of this column. The author has put a lot of work into it and it certainly seems to have useful qualities but I did feel that, in the material he sent to me, he didn’t put enough emphasis on telling me why I ought to be interested in in another language. One thing I need to know is “what’s in it for me?” as a programmer. Now that so many programs and appli cations are clamouring for attention, you need to show why a new one is worth considering. 4.6 Before starting work on developing something that will involve you in a great deal of work, you need to assess the size of the potential market. Often, unfortunately, that will be much smaller than you would like − and there may be nothing that you can do about it. The number of Archimedes machines in existence gives an upper bound on the number of copies that you can sell but you will also need to remember that some of the users won’t buy anything else anyway, some will not have any interest in your part of the forest and quite a lot of them will already have some software that they will use in preference to yours. 4.6 I, for instance, am unlikely to buy Schema − not because there is anything wrong with it, but because I don’t have much need for a spreadsheet and Pipedream will do all that is necessary. The problem isn’t just money; with many of the programs I use regularly, I don’t need to think about the technicalities while I am working and can save my energy for the work I am doing. A new piece of software needs a lot more thought at first and for some applications it’s just not worth the effort. 4.6 To get your message to the maximum number of potential buyers you need to set out the benefits of your program, and this applies to all programs, showing why it would be worth having. Set them out in a way that would help a potential user explain to his boss why the purchase price would be worth spending. At the same time you must not oversell it in the way of the advertisements for Microsoft’s latest spreadsheet which claimed more time savings in a week for the “average spreadsheet user” than the real average user spent using his or her spreadsheet. 4.6 At one time APL was sold in this way, with claims that you could write an APL program in half an hour while a COBOL programmer would take four weeks to achieve the same result. I don’t doubt that this was true for some carefully selected programs, but I wouldn’t have tried to write them in COBOL anyway. 4.6 If you are trying to sell the idea of a new language it is probably best to start off, at least to yourself, by explaining in what way it is better than BASIC. This is not because of the superiority of that language, but because it is the one which is certainly available to every Archimedes owner. From then you can go on to explain how it improves on the other standard languages. In some cases, of course, this will be by restricting the features while making them easier to use. The dBase language is a lot less powerful than Pascal or ‘C’, but you need much less programming skill to achieve significant results in a limited field. 4.6 Pascal compilation 4.6 I’m sorry, but there was a mistake in my article last month. The program from David Pilling does not multi-task while compiling. However, it is still well worth buying as it makes the work of developing programs very much easier. You can do multi-tasking compilations by creating an obey file with all the necessary instructions in it and then executing it from within an !Edit task window. 4.6 A decision which affects Pascal programmers is when to use ‘$include’ and when to use ‘import’ to bring in pre-written sections of program. If the particular routine is only used once in the whole program, there is probably nothing to choose between them, except that the import method will lead to a slight reduction in compilation time. 4.6 The big argument for using ‘import’ in your own programs, is when you need to include similar routines in various parts of your program. I have a number of string handling routines which have their own routines on which they call. If you use a simple ‘$include’ method you may end up with including the same routines several times in the same program. To avoid this, you may need to include all these ‘pre-routines’ at the start of the main program, which then means that one simple include statement won’t do the job. This is one place where the ‘import’ method really scores as, no matter how many times a routine is imported by your program, only one copy of the ‘aof’ file will be appended when the final program is linked. A 4.6 4.6 EFF 4.6 New 4.6 4.6 Multi-media Column 4.6 Ian Lynch 4.6 Last month, I finished by saying that I would go through the authoring of a simple Genesis 2 application, but first a couple of points about distribution. The application can be made available to other people by supplying it with a copy of the Genesis Browser − as long as it is not for gain. (The Browser allows other users to look through your appli cation, but not to alter it.) In other words, Oak Solutions will allow the Browser to be distributed as long as you are not selling the application commercially. If you do want to sell commercial applications authored in Genesis, it will be necessary to pay Oak Solutions a small royalty for the Browser. 4.6 Authoring a Genesis 2 application 4.6 The application I am going to produce will provide some support for AT 14 (Sound and music) of the Science National Curriculum at level 5. If this doesn’t mean anything to non-education readers, don’t worry, it confuses most people in education too! The point is just that I need a focus and this gives me an excuse to put text, graphics and sound into the application. 4.6 Planning 4.6 To author any application, it is necessary to have a topic, and an idea of what you are aiming at. This can be planned out in great detail with story boards, flow charts etc or it can be done on the hoof, so to speak. Your preferred method will depend on several factors, not least the complexity of the task, but it is easy to modify your work, so a flexible approach is always possible. This rather reminds me of the conventional wisdom of producing flow charts before writing a program. Some do, but many don’t and many do their planning in a different way. The only time I tried to use a flow chart for a piece of assembler I was writing on the BBC B, before writing it, I got in such a tangle I started again. My only useful flowcharts have been the ones I did to pass computational Mathematics examinations at University − well at least I got a certificate for them! I do intend to encourage planning but not with very rigid rules or giving the idea that there is one universal “right answer” to planning methods. 4.6 Our application needs to address the following information supplied by the National Curriculum. 4.6 • understand that the frequency of a vibrating source affects the pitch of the sound it produces. 4.6 • understand the relationship between the loudness of a sound and the amplitude of vibration of the source. 4.6 • understand the importance of noise control in the environment. 4.6 “Pupils should explore sound in terms of wave motion and its frequency. They should have opportunities to develop their understanding of the properties and behaviour of sound by developing a wave model, for example, through observation... This should be related to pupils’ experience of sounds and musical instruments, acoustic and electronic instruments and recording and synthesis.” 4.6 The first thing we must decide is how comprehensive the application is to be, what resources are available and so on. One good point to note is that, if you own the Genesis 2 editor, you can take someone else’s work and add refinements quite easily. In fact, a teaching application about sound could well employ other RISC-OS applications such as Armadeus but we will keep things simple since it can’t be guaranteed that you all have any particular application. 4.6 What we will set out to do is to reinforce the main physical parameters of waves, (wavelength, amplitude and frequency) and also how wavelength and frequency are related to speed. Our application needs a title page and then some linked pages which interactively explain the words and concepts involved. We should try to make the presentation of the information attractive and outline fonts make a big difference here, as does a multi-sync monitor in a 256 colour mode! However, before I get too carried away, for this exercise I will only use the system font, Trinity and Homerton and try to make the application suitable for a basic set up. I would like to know whether or not this approach should be general. 4.6 Finally, interaction is known to hold the attention better than simple presentation, so it helps if we force the user to answer questions and make decisions when using the application. 4.6 Getting started 4.6 Starting the Genesis Editor is done by double-clicking on it in the usual way. When it is installed on the icon bar, <menu> produces the option NEW, from which you give the application a name, in this case Sound and then drag the icon into a suitable viewer directory. A blank page appears which just looks like an empty RISC-OS window. The size and shape of the window can be altered in the usual RISC-OS way. In order to get information to display in the window, frames are used in a similar way to a desktop publisher. A frame is created by simply dragging the mouse holding down <select>. Once a frame exists, you can put a variety of things into it. First you can type text, which can be edited etc like in a DTP. Next, you can drop Draw files or sprites into the frame which can be scaled and dragged about. Then there are Euclid films and 3-D pictures, Maestro files and Armadeus sound samples. Finally, you can drop applications into frames and these can then be launched from Genesis and run as if part of it. 4.6 The title page 4.6 First drag out a box (simply drag the mouse with <select> held down) the width of the window and type in the text “An example of an approach to Science AT14”. Then MENU − INFO − FONT − Trinity.Bold and Size 20. This gives us a title. Now to centre the title MENU − FORMAT − CENTRE. Note that you must click in the frame you want to apply something to before you request the style or format from the menu, otherwise, if you had several frames, Genesis would not know which you wanted to alter. Next, we make a larger box underneath in order to type in the text. The text is entered at 13 point in Trinity.Medium font. In order to make the page look attractive I have used a grey background for the whole page and a white background for the frame. 4.6 The picture below shows what it should look like. Note there are no scroll bars on this window. This is to prevent adjustment since it is not required in this application. To alter the window settings, you need to go PAGE − INFO − WINDOW and call up a dialogue which allows you to specify which of the window adjustments is available. 4.6 Buttons 4.6 The last thing to do is to make a way of moving from this page to the next. Buttons are small objects which cause something to happen when the user double clicks on them. Several of the ones more commonly needed are provided in GenLib, a genesis resources library, but you can also design ones of your own quite easily. I have used a “Next” button on my page so that the next page I design will be displayed automatically when the user double clicks on this button. 4.6 Well, perhaps a little long winded, but we have our first page. Next time, I will build on from here some more pages describing how they can be linked. I will pass on the application and the Browser to Paul so that, if you get the Archive monthly program disc, you will be able to see how the application is built up during the next few issues. A 4.6 4.6 4.6 4.6 Lindis International 4.6 From 4.4 page 26 4.6 4.6 The Serial Port 4.6 New 4.6 4.6 Using the PC emulator − Part 8 4.6 Richard Forster 4.6 If you have followed the series thus far, you should be able to write powerful and graceful batch files with ease, aided only with a humble copy of edlin. This month it should become even easier, as we take a look at a few of the more advanced features of edlin. Of course, the information is applicable to any file created by edlin, from batch files to simple text files. 4.6 The first command of interest is “c” which allows you to copy a block of text from a to b. To demonstrate the various abilities of this command first create a text file of ten lines. There are no restrictions on the contents but if you keep each line less than one screen line in length and with different text on each line, you should find what follows easier to understand. 4.6 The copy command is one of the more informative commands which edlin offers. If you forget to mention where you want to place the text it will actually tell you this, as opposed to giving a cryptic response, more typical of other commands. This is useful, not least because there are a lot of available options for the command. The basic command syntax is: 4.6 <range-start>,<range-end>,<line> ,<number>c 4.6 The most important parts of the command are the commas. If you exclude one of the other details (as we shall do below), it is still vital to include the comma or the computer will be unable to work out which bit of data has been left out. The only exception to this is the comma after <line>. The most likely copy you will want to do, is to copy a block of lines a single time. To demonstrate, we shall copy lines 3-5 into the gap between lines 8 and 9. Type in: 4.6 3,5,9c 4.6 If you now do a listing of your file, you will see that there are now thirteen lines, with line 3-5 identical to lines 9-11. From this, you can see that the third item in the command shows the line just after which you want your text to be inserted. You will notice that we have not used the final comma or number. We could use these if we wanted more than one copy of the line. So, to have four copies of line 1 placed after line 4 type: 4.6 1,1,5,4c 4.6 A listing of the file will now reveal four copies of line 1, starting from line 4 as required. You should also notice that the asterisk which marks the current line has moved to line 4. Whenever we do any copy command, you will find that it moves to the beginning of the new version of the copied text. This asterisk is actually very useful, as it allows us a couple of short cuts with the copy command. 4.6 If you omit the starting number for the range, the copied lines with start from the current line and continue to the ending range. If you omit the second number, the block copied will end with the current line. You can also omit both numbers which will cause only the current line to be copied. To copy lines 2-4 with our present situation we could therefore type: 4.6 2,,8c 4.6 and if we then wanted line 8 to be copied twice so it occupied lines 14 and 15 4.6 ,,14,2c 4.6 If you want to copy something to the end of your text, you do not need to specify the exact number. If you had a 50 line long document and you required a line of text to be copied to line 51 (the next free line), then the third number can be set to anything above 50. The only difference between the copies is that the current line is set to the value given. Putting a 75 would therefore append the required text and then place the asterisk on line 75. When you list text, the listing is centred around the asterisk line and so you may find the text apparently has “vanished” after trying such a command. 4.6 It may happen that you wish to move a block of text. You could of course do this by using the copy command and then using the delete command on the original block of text but edlin supplies an extra command with all of this rolled into one, “m”, which, not surprisingly, stands for move. The syntax of the command is very similar to that of copy, except that there is no provision for making more than one copy. 4.6 As with the copy command, move allows you to miss out the starting number, ending number or both, and will take the missing digits to be the current line. You can also specify the number of lines you want to move by putting a + followed by the requisite number of line instead of the ending number. Create a new text file of ten lines and then type in: 4.6 3,+2,10m 4.6 If you list the text you will see that lines 3-5 have been moved to before line 10. This may be hard to see at first, because lines 3-5 have now been deleted and so everything from 6 onwards has been moved back 3 places. The lines we have just moved should now be occupying the space from 7-10, as you would expect. Move has the same restrictions as copy, namely that the commas must always be included in the command and also that the range being copied, and the place being copied too, must not overlap. 4.6 There are two other facilities available to us which you would expect to find in any editing program - namely a search command and a replace command. The first part of both commands is the range, and it is the same for the two of them. As with the copy and move range, it consists of two numbers separated by a comma, although there is no comma after the second number. 4.6 Omitting the first number will start the search from the line after the current line and omitting the second number of the range will continue the search to the end of the file. You can of course omit both but whatever you do, you must still include the comma in your command line. 4.6 Directly after the range, you also have the option of placing a question mark. If you place one in the search command, you will be prompted for confirmation after each occurrence of the string and pressing <N> will get edlin to continue with the search. A question mark with the replace command will get the computer to ask you for confirmation at each change that occurs. 4.6 The syntax for the two commands is as follows 4.6 <range-start>,<range-end>[?]r <string1><CTRL-Z><string2> 4.6 <range-start>,<range-end>[?]s <string1> 4.6 The name of the command (either r or s) occurs after the range and before the text. String1 is the text that the computer searches for and it begins directly after the command letter. If, for example, you type a space after the s, then that will be considered to be part of the command. If you are using search, this is where the command ends and edlin will name the line containing string the current line. 4.6 Replace obviously requires a second string parameter so that the program knows what to change the old string to. You can omit this second string by simply pressing <return> after the first string and any occurrences of the first string will be deleted. If you want a replacement string, you have to indicate the separation between the two strings to the program. Spaces and commas are allowed as part of the strings and so is the end of file marker, if used. You should therefore press <f6> or <ctrl-<ctrl-Z> in between the two strings. 4.6 If I wanted to go through my 500 line program, selectively changing the occurrences of “the pc emulator” to “the emulator” between lines 300 and 500 I would type in: 4.6 300,?rthe pc emulator^Zthe emulator 4.6 Whenever the string “the pc emulator” turned up, edlin would print to the screen what the line would look like with it replaced with “the emulator” ask the awe inspiring question “OK?”. A response of anything except a “y” would have edlin continuing its search for another occurrence of the string without changing anything. When the task finally comes to an end I would find that the current line was the one containing the last replaced string. If, in the above example, I had wanted all the changes to happen automatically without prompting, I would have left out the ?, and if I had only wanted it from the current line onwards, I would have left out the 300. 4.6 There is one last edlin command for us to look at: “t” for transfer − this allows us to merge another file with the file we are editing. The syntax of t is: 4.6 <line>t<filename> 4.6 Line is simply the number of the line before which you want to place the other text. Not surprisingly, it you omit a number in this place, edlin will take line to be the current line. After the t, you simply put your filename, including path if necessary, and it will be loaded in and placed inside your program. So, if I was writing my letters on edlin and I had a file called “middle.txt” which contained a paragraph I always placed in the middle of my letters, to place it in the middle of the 150 line letter I had in memory, I would type: 4.6 150tmiddle.txt 4.6 Why I would be writing my letters on edlin is left as an exercise for the reader. Next time, we shall head back to the boot disc and dissect some of the programs on it so far unscathed. A 4.6 4.6 Matters Arising 4.6 • ARM3 Software − CJE Micros have admitted that a number of their ARM3 boards have been supplied with control software written by Aleph One. CJE Micros have apologised to Aleph One and agreed to make a payment in compensation. CJE Micros now have a new version of their ARM3 control software which includes a number of new facilities. Updates are available free for all CJE ARM3 users. 4.6 Aleph One have received payment from CJE Micros and have immediately (and very generously) donated 30% of the compensation money to interna tional relief through Archive’s charity appeal. Many thanks to Aleph One. Ed. 4.6 • Removable Drive problems − By now, we have had enough experience of the MR45 drives to spot a couple of weaknesses. 4.6 First of all, it looks as if, because the unit is so compact, there can be problems caused by overheating. (Actually, we were given this tip-off by someone using them with Macs − MR45’s are usually placed underneath a Mac Plus or SE.) The cooling fan is underneath the case so, firstly, you must never put the drives on a soft surface where the feet might sink in and allow the openings around the fan to become obscured. Secondly, given that the drive is on a hard surface, don’t pack other things too closely around it, especially at the rear left which is where the fan is, because this again could inhibit the air flow. (This does not apply to the original metal-cased MR45’s because they have fans facing out of the back of the box.) Putting things on top of the drive seems to be less critical unless it is something that itself generates heat. I discovered this the hard way − I had my WS3000 modem on top of it which itself runs quite hot, especially when you also put a pile of papers on top of it as I did. When I suffered a disc error and lost a couple of articles, I moved the drive to a position where I wouldn’t be tempted to cover it with paperwork. 4.6 The second weakness is that it looks as if the auto-parking of the heads is not infallible. In other words, if you regularly switch the power off without pressing the release button or dismounting the drive, it is possible that you may get a head crash eventually. So, you have been warned − always remove the disc before switching off the power. The problem is, of course, that you cannot allow for power failures. What we are therefore saying is that the drives are not 100% reliable. In fact, Oak Computers have now decided not to supply these 45M removable drives because they don’t feel that the drives fit in with their “zero defect” policy. 4.6 Never-the-less, I am using MR45’s all day, every day and I am prepared to take the risk because they are just SO convenient for me. All the material for the magazine is held on one of these discs and I can take it backwards and forwards between home and the office. Before I had the MR45’s, I had to use floppies to carry the text back and forth, copying it to and from the hard drives at each end which was a real pain. If I wanted to do some work at home, I had to remember to copy the files to floppy and then remember to copy them back onto the hard drive in the office. As it is, I know that I will always have access to the most up- to-date information and all I have to remember to do is bring the MR45 cartridge home with me. I am aware that there is always the possibility of data corruption, so I back up all the current files onto the fixed hard discs fairly regularly. A 4.6 4.6 Small Ads 4.6 • 18-pin heavy-duty Hermes printer, 100 cps, hardly used £950 offers? PipeDream 3 £55, Terramex £5. Phone 0483−62586 4.6 • 30 colour pallettes − send £4 or £3, S.A.E. and formatted disc to R C Melling, 80 Severn Road, Culcheth, Warrington, Cheshire, WA3 5EB. 4.6 • A310’s for sale − several of different configurations. For details, phone 0272−342180. 4.6 • A310M colour + backplane, 40M hard drive £950. (Will split.) A440/1 with 8M ram £1700, Geniscan A5 scanner £95, Panasonic KXP1124 £140, Cumana 40/80 drive £70, Acorn DTP £40, Rhapsody £35, Knowledge Organiser £30, Interdictor 1 £10, ArcDFS £20. Phone Geoff on 0487−80632. 4.6 • A3000 1 M ram board upgradable to 4M £50. Phone 0332−701969. 4.6 • A3000 colour £700, Chromalock 235 £175, Atelier £70, Splice £15, Tween £15, Render Bender £45, five graphics discs £15. All ono, £950 the lot. Phone 081−670−8055. 4.6 • Acorn Colour Monitor reasonable condition £offers − buyer collects (Sheffield). Phone 0742−750619 evenings or mbox on Archive (#419) or Arcade BBS (#274). 4.6 • Acorn DTP £60, Genesis £40, FWPlus 2 £40, BBC Elite £12. Wanted: Poster, Atelier, Pipedream 3, ROM board, 5¼“ 800k disc drive, Scanlight Plus. Phone 0752−783663. 4.6 • Acorn Prolog X, as new, £70. Phone Donald Prest on 031−336−4491. 4.6 • Miniscribe 20Mb 3½“ hard disc, Acorn podule and Computerware 4 slot, 2 layer backplane and fan, £150. Phone 0742−750619 evenings or mbox Archive BBS (#419) or Arcade BBS (#274). 4.6 • Nightingale modem £20, Commstar II (BBC) rom £5, Hearsay £28, Knowledge Organiser £26, Artisan II £26, French Correspondence £12, Fads £15. Des Woon 0255−880257. 4.6 • Ovation £65, Apocalypse £10. Colin Thompson on 069−76530. 4.6 • Risc BASIC Compiler £50, also many games including Interdictor 1 £14 and E-Type £8. Phone 0843−603177. 4.6 • Risc User magazines first 31 copies plus binders £15. Voltmace joystick £12.50. Phone 021−705−1309. 4.6 • System Delta Plus (1.09) £30, SigmaSheet (2.01) £30. £50 both. All o.n.o. Phone Stuart Bell on 0273−304825. 4.6 • Wanted − RISC-OS / ANSI C Programmer with spare time to translate exciting educational program. Phone 0203−616−325. 4.6 Charity Sales 4.6 The following items are available for sale in aid of charity. PLEASE do not just send money − ring us on 0603−766592 to check if the items are still available. Thank you. 4.6 (If you have unwanted software or hardware for Archimedes computers, please send it in to the Archive office. If you have larger items where post would be expensive, just send us details of the item(s) and how the purchaser can get hold of them.) 4.6 User Guides £2 + £3 postage, Used discs 50p each, 10 for £4, 50 for £15, Acorn ROM/RAM podule £18, Family History £9, Global View £4, Personal Investor £9, I/O podule £50, StarTrader £5, Twin £10, Quazer £3, Integrex colour dump £10, Interdictor 1 £6, Holed Out £8, Superior Golf £9, Trivial Pursuit £9, Artisan Support Disc £2. A 4.6 4.6 4.6 4.6 Competition Corner 4.6 Colin Singleton 4.6 Two players in a game of Snap each have the thirteen cards of one suit, shuffled and stacked face down in front of them. They turn up their cards one at a time, simultaneously, and shout Snap! whenever the two cards presented at one turn have the same value. We are not concerned with who is quicker, but with the number of snaps there might be in the course of the game. 4.6 Considering one hand as a standard sequence, there are 13! (thirteen factorial = 6227020800) different possible sequences for the other. 4.6 How many of these will produce no snaps in the course of 13 turns? How many will produce exactly one snap (not more)? Two snaps? Three snaps?... Thirteen snaps? 4.6 If you find that too easy, then consider the game played with a full pack of 52 cards each. In this case cards must match exactly i.e. value and suit. You will, of course, need multi-length arithmetic for this one. 4.6 Entries and comments either to Paul at N.C.S. or to me at 41 St Quentin Drive, Sheffield S17 4PN. 4.6 The solution to the November (Seven Dwarfs) Competition is that there are 42 groups of possible seating positions. 14 groups contain just one position each, 14 contain 57 each and 14 contain 302 each. 4.6 The prize is shared between Graham Jones of Durness and Dr W O Riha of Leeds. Graham found that the numbers are the Eulerian Numbers, for which there is a published algorithm. Dr Riha discovered a recurrence relation which enables you to calculate the numbers for N dwarfs from those you have already calculated for N-1 dwarfs. The calculation then becomes trivial. 4.6 The winner for December, Cyclic Numbers, will be given next month. Any more entries for January, Calculation of e, or February, Mastermind? A 4.6 4.6 IFEL 4.6 new 4.6 4.6 BASIC Plots Converted to Draw Files 4.6 Steve Kirkby & Dr G Toulmin 4.6 The clever part (the program) was devised by Dr George Toulmin while Steve Kirkby wrote this article. 4.6 What the program does 4.6 This program will convert the coordinates of a set of points produced by a BASIC procedure into a Draw file. When this file is loaded into !Draw or !Draw1½ (Shareware 34) or Poster or a DTP package, it will behave exactly as a normal Draw file consisting of a single object. The Draw object produced consists entirely of straight line segments, i.e. no Bezier curves, and since the x and y coordinates of all points must be individually specified, circles, squares etc. must be so specified in the program rather than by the use of PLOT, CIRCLE, RECTANGLE etc. 4.6 The technique would be useful to anyone in science, mathematics, arts or craft/design (e.g. textile design or a Greek Key border or the curve of a table top?) wanting to create Draw designs based on mathematical expressions or geometrical procedures. These could be lines or trigonom etrical or exponential curves and spirals which are impracticable to draw accurately by hand, and polygons and circles etc. whose position, size, distortion or orientation must follow a mathematical expression. Also, a Draw image has a number advantages over a sprite: it is printed to the higher resolution of the printer rather than of the screen, it can be manipulated in a host of ways and often it uses less memory than a sprite. 4.6 How it works 4.6 The demonstration program, which is sprinkled with REMs, essentially does three things. Firstly, it assigns values to the x and y coordinates of a set of points and stores them in an array with PROC_CreatePoints. (To create your own set of points, alter this procedure accordingly, including the value assigned to the variable NoOfPoints% if necessary.) Secondly, it converts them into Draw format using PROC_CreateDrawFormat. Thirdly, it saves the pairs of coordinates to disc in the form of a Draw file under your chosen name, as a single object − PROC_Save. 4.6 You may also be interested to refer to Risc User’s article in Vol. 3.5 and 3.6 on displaying Draw files from within a BASIC program (i.e. the opposite to the program in this article). 4.6 10 REM>BAS_Draw 4.6 20 REM By Dr G H Toulmin. 4.6 30 REM PROCsetup initializes. 4.6 40 REM Coords should be >0 and in mm. 4.6 50 REM PROC_CreateDrawFile(array,n) adds the n+1 points (array(0,0), array(0,1)) to the file called outfile$. 4.6 60 REM PROCsave writes data to file outfile$ and sets filetype 4.6 to DrawFile. 4.6 70 4.6 80 PROCsetup 4.6 90 PROC_CreatePoints 4.6 100 PROC_CreateDrawFormat(coord(), NoOfPoints%) 4.6 110 PROCsave 4.6 120 END 4.6 130 4.6 140 DEF PROCsetup 4.6 150 REM Inserts 10 words of preamble into block plot%, eventually 4.6 to be copied to outfile$. 4.6 160 DIM plot% 1023:plotc%=plot%:REM Initial allowance for output 4.6 file: plot% remains unchanged 4.6 but plotc% is redefined as required, by PROCadd. 4.6 170 DIM preamble%(10) 4.6 180 preamble%()=&77617244,&C9,0, &5F534142,&77617244,&20202020, &7FFFFFFF,&7FFFFFFF,&80000000 ,&80000000 : REM 4th & 5th 4.6 words are the name of the 4.6 prog. producing the file 4.6 (ie., BAS_Draw) 4.6 190 minx%=&7FFFFFFF:miny%=&7FFFFFFF :maxx%=&80000000:maxy%=&80000000 4.6 200 FOR ptr%=0 TO 36 STEP 4: plot%!ptr%=preamble%(ptr%/4) 4.6 :NEXT ptr% 4.6 210 ptr%=40 4.6 220 INPUT ‘“Type the name for the DrawFile to be created (with pathname if necessary)” 4.6 ’‘“Eg., :Floppy.$.DrawFiles. Spiral1 ”,outfile$ 4.6 230 scale=180*256*.039375:REM One mm in internal Draw units (PRM 4.6 p.1489). The unconventional conversion is implied by 4.6 Draw Edit box. 4.6 240 ENDPROC 4.6 250 4.6 260 DEF PROC_CreatePoints 4.6 270 REM Arithmetic spiral. 4.6 280 NoOfPoints%=500 4.6 290 DIM coord(NoOfPoints%,1) 4.6 300 FOR N%=0 TO NoOfPoints% 4.6 310 th=.1*N%:r=12.7*th/(2*PI) 4.6 320 coord(N%,0)=105+r*COS(th) :coord(N%,1)=150+r*SIN(th) 4.6 330 NEXT N% 4.6 340 ENDPROC 4.6 350 4.6 360 DEF PROC_CreateDrawFormat (array(),npts%) 4.6 370 REM Inserts points from array as one Draw “path”. 4.6 380 LOCAL n% 4.6 390 bytes%=12*npts%+56 4.6 400 PROCpreamble 4.6 410 PROCadd(-1):REM No fill. 4.6 420 PROCadd(0):REM Line colour=black 4.6 430 PROCadd(0):REM Line width is minimum. 4.6 440 PROCadd(&20100042):REM Bevelled joins, butt caps, even/odd 4.6 winding, triangle cap width 4.6 =line width, cap length double 4.6 line width. (PRM pp1794-1795) 4.6 450 FOR n%=0 TO npts% 4.6 460 IF n%>0 THEN PROCadd(8) ELSE PROCadd(2) 4.6 470 PROCstep(array(n%,0), 4.6 array(n%,1)) 4.6 480 NEXT n% 4.6 490 PROCpostamble 4.6 500 ENDPROC 4.6 510 4.6 520 DEF PROCpreamble 4.6 530 REM Writes heading for path. 4.6 540 pminx%=&7FFFFFFF:REM Min. values for box coords. initially set to 4.6 550 pminy%=&7FFFFFFF:REM largest possible pos. integer, and 4.6 max. values 4.6 560 pmaxx%=&80000000:REM to largest neg. integer, to ENSURE they 4.6 are reset 4.6 570 pmaxy%=&80000000:REM at lines 680 and 720 when first path 4.6 point written. 4.6 580 PROCadd(2):PROCadd(bytes%) 4.6 590 keep1%=plotc%+ptr%:PROCadd(0) 4.6 600 keep2%=plotc%+ptr%:PROCadd(0) 4.6 610 keep3%=plotc%+ptr%:PROCadd(0) 4.6 620 keep4%=plotc%+ptr%:PROCadd(0) 4.6 630 ENDPROC 4.6 640 4.6 650 DEF PROCstep(xx,yy) 4.6 660 REM Writes one pair of co-ords. and updates bounds. 4.6 670 v%=scale*xx:PROCadd(v%) 4.6 680 IF pminx%>v% THEN pminx%=v% 4.6 690 IF pmaxx%<v% THEN pmaxx%=v% 4.6 700 v%=scale*yy:PROCadd(v%) 4.6 710 IF pminy%>v% THEN pminy%=v% 4.6 720 IF pmaxy%<v% THEN pmaxy%=v% 4.6 730 ENDPROC 4.6 740 4.6 750 DEF PROCpostamble 4.6 760 REM Closes path and writes bounds in preamble. 4.6 770 !keep1%=pminx%:!keep2%=pminy% :!keep3%=pmaxx%:!keep4%=pmaxy% 4.6 780 IF minx%>pminx% THEN minx%= pminx% 4.6 790 IF maxx%<pmaxx% THEN maxx%= pmaxx% 4.6 800 IF miny%>pminy% THEN miny%= pminy% 4.6 810 IF maxy%<pmaxy% THEN maxy%= pmaxy% 4.6 820 PROCadd(0) 4.6 830 ENDPROC 4.6 840 4.6 850 DEF PROCadd(v%) 4.6 860 REM Adds the value v% to the output buffer. 4.6 870 plotc%!ptr%=v% 4.6 880 ptr%+=4 4.6 890 IF ptr%>1016 THEN 4.6 900 DIM new% 1023 4.6 910 plotc%!1020=new% 4.6 920 plotc%=new% 4.6 930 ptr%=0 4.6 940 ENDIF 4.6 950 ENDPROC 4.6 960 4.6 970 DEF PROCsave 4.6 980 REM Insert overall min and max values first. 4.6 990 plot%!24=minx%:plot%!28=miny% :plot%!32=maxx%:plot%!36=maxy% 4.6 1000 handle%=OPENOUT outfile$ 4.6 1010 WHILE plotc%>plot% 4.6 1020 SYS “OS_GBPB”,2,handle%,plot% ,1020 4.6 1030 REM Unlike *Save, can continue (update) open file. 4.6 PRM p.872. 4.6 1040 new%=plot%!1020:plot%=new% 4.6 1050 ENDWHILE 4.6 1060 SYS “OS_GBPB”,2,handle%,plot%, ptr% 4.6 1070 *CLOSE 4.6 1080 OSCLI “SetType ”+outfile$+ 4.6 “ DrawFile” 4.6 1090 ENDPROC A 4.6 4.6 Shareware Disks Nºs 25 & 30 4.6 John Brooks 4.6 Shareware Nº 25 is a compilation of mathematics programs/functions and procedures. Most are written in BASIC though there are some which use assembler. There are far too many items to mention individually as it would take up far too much space. However, here is a list of the type of programs included: 4.6 Numerical integration: Simpson’s rule 4.6 Solution of polynomial equations 4.6 Solution of simultaneous linear equations 4.6 Generation of equations from roots 4.6 Cubic splines and interpolation 4.6 Primes 4.6 Series 4.6 Puzzles 4.6 Fourier transformations 4.6 Function plotter 4.6 Extended precision calculator 4.6 Recurring decimals 4.6 3-d surface plotter 4.6 Frequency and time response of linear circuits 4.6 Pole zero plots 4.6 Also included are various functions and procedures in these areas: 4.6 Beta function 4.6 Binomial coefficients 4.6 Permutations 4.6 Elliptic integrals 4.6 Error functions 4.6 Factorials 4.6 Gamma functions 4.6 Polynomial interpolation 4.6 Integration 4.6 Write# in ASCII form 4.6 Hyperbolic functions and inverses 4.6 Complex arithmetic and functions 4.6 Polar to rectangular conversion 4.6 Various matrix operations 4.6 Now some of this may seem very esoteric (I’m not a complete dummy at maths but some of this stuff I have never heard of) and the question is, “Is this disc worth £3”? 4.6 Well, that depends on what you want. To my mind, this disk is essen tially a library of code for performing various mathematical tasks. If you ever need any of these procedures then you have these tried-and- tested versions to get you going. It saves a lot of work that way. 4.6 I also find that this type of disk is useful for looking at other people’s code to see how they tackle things, I might pick up a tip or two to improve my own code (or indeed see some things to avoid), and there are plenty of examples to look up in here. 4.6 Shareware Nº30 is a “sound/music” collection consisting essentially of one application (!STracker) and a directory (Modules) containing some sample data for the application. 4.6 For anyone who has not yet heard of !STracker, more commonly called soundtracker, it is a utility that plays “music” in the background whilst other work can carry on in the foreground. Four pieces are included in the modules directory:- 4.6 AxelF − theme music from Beverley Hill’s cop 4.6 Dream − short, but nice 4.6 ProgFunk − err?? 4.6 VivBeat − with some very convincing thunder 4.6 If you have access to any bulletin boards or public domain software, there are loads of soundtracker modules around that you can acquire. 4.6 For those who have ever only heard !Maestro tunes, the quality and range of voices in soundtracker modules is quite remarkable, especially if you have an external amplifier and speakers. Also included on the disk is a utility called !RunThis which plays yet another soundtracker module called TESTMOD (I’m not sure that this would be called music though) and displays which voice is being used and which particular pattern is being played at the time. Finally, there is an !Edit file with some of the history and background information about soundtracker. 4.6 As one who likes messing around with computer music, I quite like this piece of software. It is not actually very useful by itself but is an impressive demonstration of the Archimedes’ abilities. It could also be useful if you are writing some software which requires background music. A 4.6 4.6 Econet Column 4.6 Neil Berry 4.6 I have received a number of letters this month from network managers who are worried about the possible consequences of this series of articles, with regard to the security of their own networks. It would be nice to think that all network users were responsible people and that there was no such thing as hacking but, of course, this is a nieve view. There are people who are not content with using the network as a normal user, but seem to want to just have a general fiddle. Whether the intention is destructive or not, this can cause real problems for network managers and so, in an attempt to keep the sanity of managers who read this column, I will restrict my comments and reviews to those of a rather non technical nature. I know this will disappoint those of you who have written to me asking for technical details but, to keep the peace, I will not be able to print system-privileged information. 4.6 Over the next few months, I will be writing about various types of connectivity from Econet brands and hard disc sharing systems, to external connectivity with IBM / DEC machines over Ethernet and Unix. To begin with, I will be starting with shared hard disc systems, in particular Nexus and the Software Solutions server. 4.6 A new concept from S.J.Research 4.6 The Nexus system consists of a hard disc shared between a number of Archimedes machines and allows the formation of a common resource area where applications may be stored and as a temporary store for private files and data. The Nexus system uses a stared network topology, unlike Econet which uses a BUS system and, for this reason, is not dependent upon all of the machines functioning correctly. It comes in a large box, about the size of a 400 series Archimedes, containing a hard disc, and is intelligent enough to communicate with up to 8 RISC-OS machines simultaneously. The system uses twisted pair cabling and each system arm may be up to 100m in length, even without using line drivers, although these are available. 4.6 One of the main problems with older Econet systems is their slow data transfer rates, around 200 to 300 kilobits per second. S.J. with their new system have made a point of trying to maintain Nexus speeds close to that of a local Acorn hard disc, approximately 10 to 20 megabits per second. S.J. say that the system’s response time, even with full capacity use from eight machines, should not drop below that of a floppy disc, which is obviously a great speed increase over Econet systems. Each Archimedes needs to be fitted with its own communication card, which would require a backplane to be fitted on an A310 but, other than this, no networking hardware is required. 4.6 The Disc Sharer 4.6 The Disc Sharer from Software Solutions, is a multitasking utility that allows Archimedes computers (and BBC micros) to access the local hard disc of another Archimedes machine, by using the Econet. Unfortunately, running the system down the Econet cables causes the same sorts of problems encountered with using the ordinary Econet system. Relative to the Nexus system, it is a lot slower and requires the presence of a hard disc and Econet hardware, to be installed on at least two machines. 4.6 Using the systems 4.6 Both of the systems are multi-tasking utilities which install themselves on the icon bar. The Nexus system installs itself as a dual icon on the icon bar, one for a personal ‘scratch-pad’ area and the other for read- only access to the shared application areas. The Nexus system is primarily aimed at the sharing of common resources, with only a small area for general read/write applications. 4.6 The Software Solutions’ server, on the other hand, is more akin to an actual fileserver and, as it may be used on a mixed network of Archi medes and BBC’s, speeds have to be such that the BBC’s are able to cope with sending and receiving files to the main server computer. The size of work area of the Solutions server depends on the size of the hard disc available on the machine that is being used. However, the Nexus server is currently supplied as a standard 40Mb drive although S.J. are willing to discuss units with higher capacity for anyone who thinks that they really need more Mega-Bytes! 4.6 This limited capacity of 40Mb may seem to be a black mark against the S.J. server but, when you think about exactly how much space your frequently used applications actually take up, you might be quite surprised at how little space they do take. Suppose that a system was used by the full eight users and the server had a shared resource area of 20Mb, which is a lot of space for a read-only sector, you would have about 2Mb of ‘user area’ for each of the users. 4.6 The Solutions’ server, on the other hand, is only restricted in space by the size of the hard drive and will allow up to 32 users to be logged on. When a user is logged on, he would usually be presented with a normal view of the Archimedes hard disc. However, there are so-called ‘fixed users’ who are not allowed to see the root directory or other directories of the hard disc or to set the password or boot options etc. In this way, some basic forms of access can be implemented. In compari son to standard S.J. and Acorn file servers there is little or no user protection, by way of specific user areas and different levels of access, although the S.J. server does, in my mind, win through by having separately accessible storage areas rather than one single user i.d., as the Software Solutions’ server has. 4.6 Setting up the systems 4.6 To use the Nexus system, you will require the S.J. hard disc unit of 40Mb which, for four stations, costs £1240. Each machine that uses the disc will require an interface card which comes as a standard podule for A300 and A400 machines and as an internal podule for A3000 machines. Either of these is easily installed by the user. Standard or custom length cables may be purchased to connect the machines in a star arrangement. Each of the standard cables has a D-Type connector at the disc end and a din plug at the podule end and can be between 1.5m and 30m, costing from £10.75 to £25.00, and ranging in speed from 20MHz to 10MHz for the longer cables. Therefore, to run a system of eight Archimedes inside one room will cost in the region of £2300 +VAT. 4.6 The Solutions’ server, on the other hand, uses only the Econet system to communicate with its hard disc and so, for those establishments that already have Econet, no further hardware needs to be purchased. This must clearly be seen as an advantage over the Nexus system. The educational price for a network licence for the Disc sharing system is £126.50 inc VAT − much cheaper than Nexus. Of course, if you do not already have an Econet system, minimally consisting of at least a clock and connecting wires, then this of course would have to be added to the costing. 4.6 To sum up, I would personally opt for the Nexus system, despite its relatively high cost, mainly for its ease and speed of use. However, the much, much cheaper Software Solutions Disc Sharer cannot be overlooked mainly because of its price. 4.6 What next? 4.6 In the near future, I hope to be dedicating a series of articles to the new Level IV fileserver from Acorn − when I’ve amassed enough information. 4.6 As always I can be contacted at: 21 Pargeter Street, Stourbridge, West Midlands, DY8 1AU (no phone calls please). If you have any comments about this column or would like to offer up some ideas, please feel free to write to me. If you have developed any new network software, no matter how trivial it may seem, I would like to see it and give it a review. A 4.6 4.6 Writing Maths: Equasor 4.6 Brian Cowan 4.6 How do you decide which computer to buy? This may seem a strange question with which to start a review of a software product but, hopefully, the reason will become clear as you read on. The sensible person would probably choose the computer which runs the software packages which he/she requires. By this definition, the early Archimedes owners would seem to have been somewhat lacking in sense! They purchased a machine with virtually no software base, a turbo-charged BBC micro with a desktop environment which was, thankfully, optional. 4.6 Foresight 4.6 What these “senseless” people appreciated was the phenomenal power of this new computer and its ARM chip set. Buying an Archimedes in those early days was an investment, or a gamble, depending on how you viewed it. With that sort of raw power available for the first time in a microcomputer, and at a reasonable price, the software should follow. When it did, there was the potential for some really earth-shattering products − and so it has transpired. 4.6 Good impression 4.6 Computer Concepts seem to have adopted precisely this philosophy. Readers will know of Impression, if not by experience, then by repute. This is the DTP package by which others are judged. I have been using Impression for the last few months and now I think I would be lost without it. At work, I have arranged for the purchase of a site licence so that my colleagues can also have the benefit, such is my regard for this product. 4.6 More goodies 4.6 In other areas also, Archimedes owners are finding new software which is the equal of, or better than, that available for the more “traditional” machines. For example Schema for spreadsheets, Pipedream for “virtually everything”, Reduce for computer algebra, WorraCad for drafting, and new products on the horizon. Soon, we should have the last word in database programs, and new PC emulation which will eclipse even an IBM. There are certainly exciting times ahead. 4.6 Writing maths 4.6 But back to the subject of this review. I have mentioned in the past my particular need for producing mathematical equations within documents, as most of my writing is of a scientific or mathematical nature. In the past, I have been using First Word Plus together with a special maths font which I designed years ago, and which is sold by Ian Copestake Software as a “First Font”. This has served me well and I have been reluctant to change until something much better came along. Perhaps it finally has. 4.6 First Fonts 4.6 I must, however, first extol the virtues of the First Font option. The advantage of this is that it is an integrated system. Text and the equations are all written together and the production of documents is a beautifully simple process. However, simplicity comes at the expense of flexibility. One has only the standard First Font font, and slightly different font sets are used with different printer drivers. For increased versatility in the production of scientific (and other) documents one must graduate to a more sophisticated system. 4.6 Next steps 4.6 There are two types of solution to this problem. There is a remarkable software package called TEX. The Pascal program for this is in the public domain and there are implementations of this available for the Archimedes, both a PD version and also a commercial product. TEX is essentially a type-setting language. To produce a document, one writes a file of text and strange codes. This file is then processed by the TEX program, to drive a printer or possibly a screen previewer. So to write a document one actually types in what seems to be a load of gobblede gook. I think you have to have a certain kind of brain to do this sort of thing well. I have used TEX both on mainframe computers and on the Archimedes and I find it rather tough going. This is no criticism of TEX; it is my problem. The Archimedes PD version I used is quite superb, with a really good screen previewer. Notwithstanding the excellence of the product, I prefer the other approach. I find it much easier to use a “what you see is what you get” system. So, I prefer to produce documents using a DTP type of program; I really need to see what is going on. The disadvantage (with existing systems) is that the production of text and the creation of equations are no longer entirely integrated. 4.6 Equasor 4.6 Equasor is an equation generator. It is not a scientific DTP program; it would usually be used in conjunction with a separate DTP package. Equasor is produced by Computer Concepts and so, in style, many aspects are similar to Impression. The two products, not surprisingly go together very well but Equasor can be used in conjunction with any DTP product, or it can be used alone, simply to produce equations. Part of the versatility of Equasor is due to the fact that it produces its equations in Draw format. Thus, an equation may be imported into any document which supports Draw objects or it may be sent to a printer driver. Using Impression’s embedded frame facility, an equation may be incorporated into a line of text. In fact, embedded frames almost completely integrate the equation and text creation processes; this is a powerful feature of Impression. 4.6 Intelligent behaviour 4.6 In conception, Equasor is rather like the utilities FontDraw and FontFX in that it facilitates the creation of “fancy effects” from the available font sets but here, the fancy creations are mathematical equations. As a matter of course, all the usual mathematical features are provided, such as superscripts and subscripts, a variety of brackets, integrals, sums and products, roots and fractions, etc. However, the remarkable feature of Equasor is that it appears to be intelligent. Thus subscripts, superscripts and limits are automatically scaled to 75% of the preceding text. This applies recursively although any of these things can be overridden if required. The other aspect of intelligence in the program is that the cursor always seems to go to the right place at the right time while creating a complex expression. Thus, for instance, in producing a character which has subscripts and superscripts, having selected the character, the cursor moves to the subscript position. When these have been entered, on pressing the “arrow right” key, the cursor moves to the superscript position and when these have been entered, a further “arrow right” press moves the cursor to the normal position for the next full character. 4.6 EFF MathGreek font 4.6 It is an unfortunate fact of life (or so the mathematicians would have us believe) that our alphabet contains only twenty six letters. Mathematics thus makes frequent use of Greek characters. It also uses a variety of special symbols as well as the odd Hebrew character. Equasor is supplied with the MathGreek font set from the Electronic Font Foundry. In use, these symbol fonts are available from a symbol window rather like the !Chars application; “clicking” on a character in the window enters it into the equation at the cursor position. In general, the EFF font set is a good compilation of symbols and characters needed by the mathematician. There are a few extras that I would like to see, such as the second Planck’s constant h_ and the mathematical symbols >~ (of the order of or greater than), <~ (of the order of or less than) and [__] , (as well as I can produce them using existing characters together with Impression’s kerning facility). I have one serious criticism concerning the existing MathGreek font set, however. At present, EFF provide an upright and an italic set. However there is a serious need for bold versions of these, particularly for the Greek characters. Vectors are conventionally denoted by bold characters and one does use Greek vectors. I hope EFF will rectify this omission. 4.6 Proof of the pudding 4.6 The best way to understand Equasor is to use it. In fact, I extensively used beta test versions of the product for some time before I even had a manual. The fact that I was able to produce some quite complex equations is an indication of how intuitive the program is to use. Here are some examples: 4.6 4.6 4.6 This sort of expression is called a continued fraction. It does not look too complicated, but the important point to note is the ease with which this was produced using Equasor. The lines all adjusted themselves to just the required length and everything aligned automatically. It would have been quite a nightmare (for me) to produce such an expression using TEX, calculating where to put the lines and characters. Now for an equation involving solid angles. 4.6 4.6 This equation was quite straightforward to produce. I had a little difficulty in creating the vertical line of the right size; that was not done automatically. The next three equations were trivial to produce using Equasor. They really demonstrate the power of the program. Here is an expression concerning the refraction of the electric part of an electromagnetic wave. 4.6 4.6 Next we have the azimuthal component of an electric field expressed in terms of spherical harmonics. This involves subscripts and superscripts: 4.6 4.6 Now, in a different area of physics, comes a formula from what is called Fermi Liquid theory (one of my current projects). This involves all manner of subscripts, superscripts, primes, arrows and goodness knows what. 4.6 Looking at these equations, you see that the Latin symbols are all printed in italic form, This is the conventional way and it occurs automatically (although this can be overridden). Greek symbols can be configured to appear italic if desired; convention is a little hazy here. Operators such as cos and sin are printed upright and these may be selected from a menu. Also, the menu allows one to create new forms, which can be stored for future usage. 4.6 Limitations and bugs 4.6 There is a class of mathematical objects which the present version of Equasor can not produce. These are things like matrices, that is, tables of symbols separated horizontally or vertically with no operator between them. Thus, as well as matrices, one can not create binomial coeffi cients, nor the Christoffel symbols of general relativity. In this last case, however, we can have a jolly good try. Here is the definition of a Christoffel symbol: 4.6 4.6 The symbol is correct except that there should not be the horizontal bar under the i and j. I was surprised to discover a very strange bug in my version of Equasor: if you place two summation signs or two integral symbols adjacent to each other, then one of them blows up! I am sure this will be fixed on the release version. Finally, let’s finish with a simple one: another equation from electromagnetism. 4.6 4.6 As you can see, this is perfect. 4.6 Unfair? 4.6 You might think that I have been unfair in my review of this product as I have tended to concentrate on its limitations. Of course, the points about the MathGreek font relate to EFF and not to Equasor itself. Many of the examples I have given here demonstrate some of the very minor limitations in the program. This should be taken as an indication that I have performed an intensive test of Equasor and that most things I tried were a complete success. Also, as you will realise, Computer Concepts take the feedback from their customers very seriously: witness the evolution of Impression. So I am convinced that future versions of Equasor will address the few points I have made, to produce an even better product. 4.6 Some technical details 4.6 I mentioned above that Equasor produces its output in Draw format. This point must be clarified a little. Having produced an equation using Equasor, the next step is to save it. One has the choice of saving the object either in “Equasor” format or in Draw format. Both types of file may be dropped into Impression frames. In fact, the Equasor format file contains the same Draw code and it is this which produces the image in the frame but the Equasor format file contains more. It incorporates the specification of the equation. Thus this file may be loaded back into Equasor to be edited; this can not be done with the Draw file. The Equasor file can not, however, be loaded into the current version of Draw. The extraneous information confuses the program. For this reason both file formats are required. 4.6 In conformity with Computer Concepts policy, the Equasor program is all written in ARM code. This leads to increased speed and efficiency and so must be rated as a plus point; it also discourages hackers! 4.6 In use 4.6 For those tricky parts of equations, you can zoom in to a magnification of up to 999% and you can pan out to 1%. Fine control over parts of equations is facilitated by effects, as in Impression. Also, there is full implementation of leading, spacing and kerning. So, equations can be laid out precisely as required. For those difficult times, there is an eighty page manual containing most information that should be required. In fact, as I said above, I have made very little use of the manual − the program is remarkably intuitive. However, whenever I needed to find something out, I generally managed to do so. 4.6 Included on the Equasor disc is a directory of sample equations. These are quite impressive and they really show off the program’s extensive range of features. Funnily enough, I found errors in some of these equations but I think these should have been corrected in the release version. 4.6 Conclusion 4.6 It is always a joy to review a really good product. This is one such occasion. I have been wanting a program which would do this sort of thing, as I have mentioned in Archive from time to time, and here it is. The only serious limitation of Equasor is that you can’t produce matrices (or at least I can’t!). Apart from that, I am happy to say that I unhesitatingly recommend Equasor to all those who need to produce equations and/or incorporate them into DTP documents. It is certainly as good as anything I have seen on any other computer. 4.6 Equasor comes from Computer Concepts and the complete package costs £49 plus VAT. This includes the EFF MathGreek font. The Archive price is £52. A 4.6 4.6 The Serial Port 4.6 New 4.6 4.6 BASE 5 4.6 New 4.6 4.6 Ten Tips for those with Bigger Memories 4.6 Stuart Bell 4.6 The old cliché about most human beings being creatures of habit is probably as true in the world of personal computing as in most other spheres of human activity. In other words, once we’ve developed a way of working, we tend to stick to that way, whatever happens. 4.6 In this case, the ‘whatever happens’ is the upgrade from 1Mb memory to 4Mb and an awareness, after a few weeks with the upgrade, that I wasn’t really taking full advantage of it. An Archimedes with 4Mb is really quite a different machine from its smaller brother and it opens up new practices that simply aren’t possible before the memory growth. So here are ten tips for those who have also been bitten by the upgrade bug. (Apologies to those lucky people who started with 4Mb, to whom all this is probably so boringly obvious!) 4.6 Multi-task your applications 4.6 This is surely the main reason for upgrading in the first place. BU (before upgrading), the power of RISC-OS simply can’t be realised because you can’t multi-task significant applications. However, AU (after upgrading) you can run, for example, both !Draw and Impression and this makes things much easier. Another good idea is to have !FontFX, a scientific calculator (PD versions widely available) and the RISC-OS printer driver all loaded on the icon bar. !Patience can be there ready for a quiet moment! 4.6 Auto-load your applications 4.6 Manually loading all the applications that you regularly use can be a little tiresome. Assuming that you have a hard disc, they can all be loaded onto the icon bar every time you reset or boot up the machine. (The only thing that stops floppy users doing this is disc capacity). You need a file called ‘!boot’ in the root directory and can use *Configure Boot if you want to cause that file to be obeyed when the power is switched on, at a reset or <ctrl-break>. (Use *Configure Noboot to run a boot file on <shift-power on>, <shift-reset> or <shift-break>.) You also need to do a *OPT 4 3 to tell the system to “exec” the boot file.) 4.6 You can put all the commands to be obeyed in the !boot file, but it’s simpler to put all commands to be obeyed once the desktop has been entered in a separate file. The !boot file contains the line: 4.6 Desktop −File scsi::winny.$ .StartList 4.6 when Startlist is the name of the file with the commands to be obeyed. My Startlist looks like this: 4.6 Filer_Opendir scsi::winny.$ 4.6 .Documents 4.6 Filer_Opendir scsi::winny.$ 4.6 scsi::winny.$.!Fonts 4.6 scsi::winny.$.!System 4.6 scsi::winny.$.!Edit 4.6 scsi::winny.$.!Draw1½ 4.6 scsi::winny.$.!Impress 4.6 scsi::winny.$.!1stWord+ 4.6 scsi::winny.$.!FontFX 4.6 scsi::winny.$.!PrinterLJ 4.6 scsi::winny.$.IconClock 4.6 The Filer_Opendir commands open directories on the desktop, ready for me to select the file to be accessed. Strangely, it seems that those opened second are displayed behind those opened first so, in my case, $.Documents appears in front of the root directory. 4.6 !Fonts and !System are opened so that they have been seen before the applications that require them. Adding the command DeskTop to the end of the !Fonts.!Run file removes the need to press the space bar after the Font Catalogue has been displayed. Finally, the seven applications that I regularly use are loaded and will be shown on the icon-bar at the end of the boot process. 4.6 Re-configure your machine 4.6 You can save and restore the configuration details held in CMOS RAM during the upgrade process but it’s not very useful. Most of the memory allocation values are set automatically, but others need revision. In particular, if you are using outline fonts, do re-set FontSize. Whilst you could keep a low FontSize and a higher FontMax, I’ve found that Impression sometimes reduces the FontSize, with the consequence that fonts that used to be in memory then have to be reloaded from disc. Keeping FontSize high (I use 512K) prevents this from happening. 4.6 Consider new screen modes 4.6 With 1Mb, memory-hungry modes weren’t really viable with some appli cations. I used mode 16 (132 columns) for DTP but then had to change down when I wanted to load a printer driver. Now, any mode can be used. In particular, for those with ordinary (not multi-sync) monitors, modes like 66, which Computer Concepts supply with the !NewModes module, giving 104 x 36 text resolution, are worth using. Multi-sync owners can have a field-day! To make the machine auto-boot into your required mode, the first line of my !Boot file is !NewModes. I then set the mode to 66 using the !Configure utility off the Applications disc. 4.6 Don’t kill modules 4.6 A common problem discussed in Archive has been the fact that many applications load modules into memory when loaded, but don’t remove them when the application is quit. This soon clutters up memory on smaller machines, and the solution identified was to add RmKill commands at the end of application !Boot files. However, if you are multi-tasking applications, such a procedure could delete modules that other appli cations are still using. Hence, delete all RmKill commands that you may have added ‘BU’. Also, if you’ve added a -Max entry to the WimpSlot command in the !Boot file for, for example, !1stWord+, you may wish to remove the entry, or at least increase the value. 4.6 Gain (a little) speed with RMfaster 4.6 In all Archimedes (and A3000s), the ROM runs slower than the RAM. Hence, modules built into RISC-OS run slower than those loaded off disc. One possible solution discussed in the past in Archive is to make the MEMC run the ROM at RAM speed. This may or may not work, depending on the particular ROM chips. The *RMFaster command (see page 351 in the A400 user manual) copies modules in ROM into RAM to gain a speed increase of, in theory, 33%. BU, there probably wasn’t enough memory to make this an attractive option. A problem is that as you can’t *RMFaster modules that are active − you can’t, for example, speed up the DeskTop once it’s been loaded. 4.6 The way to get round this is to *RMFaster appropriate modules in the boot-up process, in the same way that applications can be loaded automatically. On power-up, all the required modules will be ready in ROM. However, on a Reset or <ctrl-break>, they will be in RAM, with the ROM versions unplugged, and hence not able to be *RMFaster’ed. 4.6 Therefore, if the same automatic process is to be followed both on power-on and on a Reset, all modules to be copied into RAM must first be *RmKilled (to delete existing RAM versions) and then *RMReInited (to ‘de-unplug’ the ROM versions). 4.6 It is a matter of conjecture − or very difficult measurement − about which modules will most improve the performance of your machine. I’m experimenting with three, but would be glad to hear of other ideas. So, my complete !Boot file looks like this: 4.6 | Stuart’s !boot file, Feb 1991. 4.6 !NewModes 4.6 rmkill draw 4.6 rmreinit draw 4.6 rmfaster draw 4.6 rmkill desktop 4.6 rmreinit desktop 4.6 rmfaster desktop 4.6 rmkill windowmanager 4.6 rmreinit windowmanager 4.6 rmfaster windowmanager 4.6 Desktop -File scsi::winny.$ .StartList 4.6 Use a RamDisc 4.6 BU, RamDisc was a joke. With a hard disc, even AU, I’m not convinced that a RamDisc is of great value but some people may want to try it. For floppy users, it will definitely be worthwhile, especially for holding the !Fonts directory and giving very quick access. Be very careful if you use RamDisc to hold files on which you’re working. Set the size of RamDisc using the *Configure RAMFsSize command. (In my experience, Impression can still crash and therefore you can lose your document if it is totally in RAM. Ed.) 4.6 Consider your application set-up 4.6 Both word-processors and DTP packages often include a spelling checker and a dictionary. However, BU there may not have been sufficient memory to run them sensibly. It’s well worth checking the manual for each package to check for facilities that you never used BU, and may have forgotten exist. For example, I’ve now set up Impression II to load the dictionary on start-up and check each word as I type. No excuses for typographical errors any more! 4.6 Think about spooling your printing 4.6 RISC-OS lets you send the output from your application (assuming that it uses the printer drivers) to a file for later printing. The theoretical advantage is that when a file is being printed, you can continue to use the application, whereas printing directly from, for example, Impres sion, stops you doing anything else. A detailed explanation is in the Nov-Dec issue of ‘Archimedean’ sent out by Computer Concepts and in the February Archimedes World. BU, it was more memory-efficient to load the printer driver and then quit it, leaving the actual printing module loaded. AU, background printing is possible. However, I find that, with complex printing tasks using the !PrinterLJ, it takes almost as long to write to disc (which hogs the whole machine) as it does to write straight to the printer! 4.6 Think about a ‘Sticky Backdrop’ 4.6 An idea borrowed from the world of the Apple Mac, a sticky backdrop, allows you to make directories or applications ‘stick’ onto the desktop surface and be accessed simply by clicking on them. If such items are normally kept well down your directory structure, access can be much quicker. Also, the dull plain desktop can be replaced by a customised pretty picture, and a whole background drop, and automatically loaded on boot-up. BU, the 80K that my !StickyBD application (available on Careware 6) demanded made it non-viable. AU, I tried it for a while, but decided in the end that I preferred to load my applications and open the main document directory automatically in the ways described earlier in the article. It’s a matter of preference but it’s worth trying !StickyBD if you can get a copy. 4.6 Well, that’s it! A 4mb (or even 2mb) Archimedes is quite a different machine. I hope that these tips will help you make the best use of your expanded memory. A 4.6 4.6 4.6 Pen Down Update 4.6 Dave Morrell (& Doug Weller) 4.6 Some time ago, I (Dave) did a review on the pre-release version of PenDown (Archive 3.12 p48 + 4.1 p42). This is intended to update some of the comments in that review after I have seen the final release version. 4.6 Most of the basics remain the same. Along the top of the page is an icon menu from which various selections can be made. There are two new icons along this menu. At the extreme left there is an icon to swap between text and graphics. With the pen nib selected, text in the chosen font, size and colour can be typed in from the keyboard. Sprite graphics, but not draw files, can be dragged onto the page. With the pencil selected, the sprite can be positioned, sized or deleted using the mouse. 4.6 The select button is used to position the sprite and the adjust button is used to size it. If the wrong sprite is dragged onto the page double clicking on it with select will give a query box asking if you wish to delete it. Pictures can also be deleted by dragging them off the PenDown page. Text can still be entered in this mode but the text caret will not respond to the mouse. 4.6 Next to this icon there is another new icon which swaps between insert and overwrite mode whilst typing. The icons for leading and justifi cation have also been changed. 4.6 The main menu is still brought up by clicking <menu> over the document. This has one addition to the pre-release menu. PenDown now has a spelling checker. It does not have a check-as-you-type mode but will check single words, parts of the document or the whole document. The spell check window contains five “push button” panels. ‘Cancel’ is obvious. ‘Learn’ gives the option of adding an unknown word to the dictionary. ‘Try again’ allows the user to have another go at spelling an incorrect word. ‘Suggest’ gives a list of words that may be the one required. If the correct word is in the list, clicking on it will automatically replace it in the text. ‘Next’ will move you along to the next unrecognised word. 4.6 Also on the spell menu there is a ‘To file’ option. If this is clicked, PenDown will search the document for any unrecognised words and produce a list to be saved to disc. This could be used as a record of spelling difficulties or as a basis for further work. With this option, the spell check window does not appear on screen. 4.6 Clicking <menu> over the PenDown icon on the icon bar produces another short menu. This has four entries. ‘Info’ leads to a window giving information about the program, name, purpose, author and version number. Clicking on ‘Fresh start’ will clear the document from memory for somebody else to use the program. If the document has been altered since the previous save, a check window appears before clearing the document. ‘Configure’ sets up a rather complicated looking window for changing the start-up settings of PenDown. This is very comprehensive and governs what will work on the icon menu and on the main menu. Non-working options are blanked out. This is very useful for younger children as they can be introduced to the various options gradually as they become more familiar with the program. 4.6 The manual has also been changed. I found it a model of clarity. It is easy to follow, explains all the functions of the program and is packed with many ideas for use. As a basic guide to wordprocessor use in education I can recommend the manual alone! 4.6 The two problem ‘features’ I found in the pre-release version have not, so far, materialised in this version, so screen refreshing seems to have been improved. 4.6 Three new outline fonts came with the new release but one from the pre- release version, Lineout, was missing. The new fonts are Futura, Gothic and Script. Futura is a ‘stencil’ type font, Script is a ‘cursive’ type font and Gothic is gothic. Unlike some other ‘gothic’ and ‘olde english’ fonts I have seen, this one is readable for lengthy passages. 4.6 The program is now heavily protected against copying. A copy can be made but the original key-disc must be used to get it running. Having worked in schools for many years, I know how easily accidents can happen and if something happens to the key-disc I hope Logotron would replace it without charge. Nothing about this is mentioned in the manual although an extra sheet of information states that protected discs can be bought without documentation for £20 by registered users. 4.6 The only minor niggle that I have so far found with the program is the lack of borders as found on the old BBC version. 4.6 There are two other programs on the disc. !Cloze will produce cloze procedure worksheets by dragging a text file to it. The frequency of the missing words can be set by the user. I would like it to have saved the missing words as a separate text file as well, but you cannot have everything. The other program !WordList will decode the main dictionary so that changes can be made to it. 4.6 I am still happy with the program and am confident that it will have a future in schools. 4.6 Doug Weller adds... 4.6 I’ve been able to use this program with my class of 8-9 year olds, and my 12 year old son has written a 6,000 word story on it. Its ability to print on various sizes of paper − A3 to A6, portrait or landscape, as well as fanfold (including fanfold rotated), is very useful. Pendown has a very powerful Search and Replace facility, although a simplified menu can be selected for younger children. It also allows a word count on single words, which could be very useful in showing children how many ‘ands’ and ‘thens’ they have used! Or, of course, one could use it to make frequency counts of letters. Another feature it has that I wish my Impression II had is a copy/delete to bin. This moves marked text to a scratchpad. But, unlike most other Archimedes word processors, you can view the scratchpad (the Pendown ‘bin’). Even more useful, the bin will hold more than one block of text. As far as I can see, the bin’s capacity is only governed by the amount of memory in your computer. Once it is open, you can choose which block of text you wish to copy back to the original document. !Wordlist is a very nice freebie. Besides allowing you to add words to the dictionary, it also does anagrams and subgrams, searches through a list of words or your dictionary, does frequency counts of all the words in a text and sorts them either alphabetically or by frequency. A 4.6 4.6 BookBinder 4.6 David Hart 4.6 To quote from the introduction to the User Guide: “BookBinder is an application for the Acorn Archimedes computer that enables you to create books which are multitasking interactive texts/graphics. They can be used as multiple choice quizzes, programmed learning sessions, interac tive fiction, interactive graphical display databases or presentation software. This is achieved simply by dragging icons; there is no need for any code. Despite this simplicity, BookBinder is a powerful specialised programming language capable of producing a wide variety of books. Once finished, the book may be copied to any disc and sold, or freely distributed. In the true spirit of the desktop many books may be opened at the same time.” 4.6 How well does it meet these aims? 4.6 I certainly found it easy to create my first book. The tutorial section of the User Guide is easy to follow and allows the first time user to quickly get the hang of creating a book. One point I would make is that, although the explanation of creating a book was clear, there were no notes on how to edit a previously written book, so when I returned to a book I had started previously, it took some time and thought as to how to add extra pages. 4.6 What is a Book made up of? 4.6 BookBinder takes “pages” that have been made up by using !Draw. Thus, you need to be able to use !Draw before you can use BookBinder. As !Draw files can be made up from sprites and text, you can use other packages to help you create the !Draw files. BookBinder is supplied on a single disc but, as it requires the a !Systems folder and as it is also useful to have the !Draw and !Paint applications and the !Fonts directory handy, you are asked to create two working discs − “Drawing” containing !Binder, !System, !Paint, !Draw and !Edit and “Binder” containing your !Fonts and !BookRead, Converter and the Examples folder from the master disc. Musbury Consultants include two disc labels for these discs. (One minor niggle − the User Guide asks you to name one of the discs “Binder” but the label for that disc says “Binding”.) 4.6 Creating a book involves copying an application called !BookRead, and giving it a new name and opening up the Pages folder within this application’s directory. You then drag your pages into this folder and create the links between the pages. This is done in two stages. First you open up the plan of the book and drag the pages into the plan. The plan then consists of a set of rectangular boxes with the page names and a START and END box. By pressing <menu>, you can then establish links between the pages. Once a link has been established between two pages you can then decide which “button” on the first page will call the second page. A “button”, as far as BookBinder is concerned, is an object in the !Draw file. When you go to make a button a window is opened showing the !Draw file and you can select the !Draw object to be made into the button. Once you have finished creating the links, you then bind your book together. 4.6 The User Guide also gives details as to how to change the !Sprites file within your new application to give the application its own unique icon on the icon bar and disc window. 4.6 How do I rate BookBinder? 4.6 Obviously, it does not have as many features as Genesis or Magpie. You cannot have music from Maestro files or animation from Euclid and Film Maker. It also lacks the page creation facilities of Genesis. Each page of a BookBinder book has to be created in !Draw. However, I certainly found it easier to use than Genesis and its books took up less room. I would suggest therefore that if you wished to create books (hyperbooks?) that do not use animation or sound, BookBinder (at £50 through Archive) represents good value for money. On the other hand if you require the extra features offered by Genesis (at £85 through Archive) or Magpie (at £57 through Archive) then, obviously, you would have to choose one of those. 4.6 One last thought 4.6 As with all HyperMedia packages, the ease of use is only the first step. It is the designing and planning of the “book” that is the important part. Remember that, with these packages, it’s a case of: “Garbage in HyperGarbage out!” A 4.6 4.6 Help!!!! 4.6 • Exabyte tape streamers − I want to be able to run an Exabyte tape streamer from an Oak SCSI interface. Does anyone have any software I can use? These tapestreamers use small 8mm video tapes and are relatively cheap. John Gibson, Grantham. 4.6 • Hardware project − After Alan Bryant’s comments in the Help Column last month, we’ve had one offer of a suitable project − a combined PAL coder / VIDC enhancer / genlock. I’ve put the two of them in contact, but if anyone else is interested, drop us a line. Ed. 4.6 • Keyboard compatibility − Is the A400/1 keyboard compatible with any PC Clone format? Some use the same plug, and there are add-ons such as bar- code readers, key-pads etc. Nik Kelly, Liverpool. 4.6 Help offered 4.6 • Epson MX80 driver − Many thanks are due to the wizard at Clares who wrote a driver for my old Epson MX80 F/T III, circa 1982. Yes, folks, it can be done! Nik Kelly, Liverpool. A 4.6 4.6 Orrery Version 1.3 4.6 Maurice Dixon & Ruth del Tufo 4.6 Orrery is a computer model of the solar system. It shows the motion of the planets from space-time co-ordinates which can be user-defined. The planets are set against a background of stars which may be joined to show the constellation figures. 4.6 The original Orrery was a clockwork model of the solar system made to demonstrate planetary motion. It was made in the eighteenth century for the 4th Earl of Orrery. Spacetech have implemented and generalised this to include all the currently known planets. It is important to recognise the scope that Spacetech set themselves; the Orrery is not concerned with the wider astronomical issues of the formation of galaxies, stars or the solar system. They are to be congratulated on providing such an interesting scientific model as the Orrery for us to explore the solar system. 4.6 The review testing was carried out by a team of three people; one an ARM enthusiast, one an experienced many body modeller and one a seven year old school girl. None of us was either a professional astronomer or a science teacher. The testing was carried out using an ARM-2, a single floppy drive, a standard Acorn RGB colour monitor and a Panasonic KX- P1124 printer; this would fairly replicate the A3000 environment. 4.6 Planets 4.6 The main Orrery allows the user to select a date and time for which the position of the planets are derived. The user can select the rate at which the model will then progress into the future. Each planet is represented by a distinct icon; Spacetech have taken a practical approach to allowing the user to ‘tune’ the screen to the current requirements. You can choose to allow the orbits to be displayed with full or partial orbital arcs available. For clarity, you can choose to display the initial letter of the planet or to omit a planet icon altogether. Basic planet and orbital information such as size, eccentri city, angle to plane, planet radius, distance from earth, mean and actual distance from the sun and perihelion is given by selecting the planet in its orbit. For the geocentric viewpoint, the angle with respect to the celestial equator and azimuth are given. It is often necessary to freeze the motion before selecting the planet. The model makes heavy demands on the ARM-2 so response to selection or menu choices can appear sluggish. The motion in the orbits can be jumpy and the orbits themselves are shown as a series of straight lines which looks a little untidy. 4.6 The power of Spacetech’s Orrery is seen in the way that different frames of reference may be defined. A view may be chosen which is centred on the sun and a selected planet locked onto. A user can consider themself to be looking in any direction at the sky from anywhere on the earth at any time. It is a delight to watch the sun rising with a group of planets moving close to the ecliptic. Spacetech have provided a lighting background to show the black of night, the dark blue of twilight, and the brighter blue of daylight. The user can choose to have the direc tions displayed on the horizon and change direction as the planets move. The configuration may be printed as a sprite picture using !Paint; surprisingly, the new moon which was not visible on the screen can be clearly identified in the picture and then confirmed using the mouse pointer. It is this earth based view of the sky which desktop astron omers will find so attractive. 4.6 There is a very simple line graph of the planets with a distance scale normalised to the size of the earth’s orbit. Not all the planets can be seen together but the search out along the axis emphasises the enormous distances to the further planets compared to the inner ones. Surpris ingly, the planet data is not available off the line graph. 4.6 The model does not appear to incorporate the Asteroid belt or Comets. 4.6 The Orrery also includes the facility to display as a graph the angular displacement of the planets from the sun for a user-chosen year. The colour screen display was not easy to read and the black and white !Draw printout effectively lacked the contrast to make all the planets visible. 4.6 Stars 4.6 It is possible to display a large number of stars as a background to the planetary display. The stars are grouped in constellations and it is possible to use the mouse pointer to select a star for identification. The star identity and constellation are displayed as a superimposed window while the actual star is marked with a cross on the Orrery window. The user can select to have the stars joined to give the familiar constellation figures and this immediately attracts interest. The shape of the sectoring of the sky into the 88 constellation sectors is not displayed. 4.6 Using the earth as a reference frame, the motion of the stars can be tracked. When a heliocentric view is chosen, the sun is treated as another star, is barely detectable and has surprisingly little data associated with it. The star data is displayed even when the model has star displays suppressed. Using the geocentric viewpoint, it is possible to display the track of the sun when the grid is chosen. 4.6 Moon 4.6 The earth’s Moon is included in the model but not the moons of other planets. Detailed positional information and a phase description for the Moon is available via the mouse pointer. 4.6 Glossary 4.6 There is a set of demonstration configurations which can be used to illustrate some of the astronomical terms. Some of these work very well for illustrative purposes but others, Conjunction and Opposition, sent us scurrying away to the encyclopaedia to check both the meaning of the term and what would be expected. The difficulty arose because the terms apply to an earth-based reference frame for which the user can alter the control panel. A glossary should explain and illustrate in an immediately accessible way the chosen item. In contrast, the illustra tion of circum-polar stars and planetary retrograde motion was immediately understandable. The display of twilight, sun rise, noon and sunset were all OK. 4.6 Dates 4.6 The date range for the Orrery was from the year −9999 to at least 9999; the only significant bug in the system that we found related to putting in too big a year number and not being able to back out of the warning; a similar error occurred with the control panel for accelerated time increments. We do not consider these to be serious difficulties. For the Ephemirides the date range was 0 to 99999. 4.6 Data access 4.6 The primary access to the data is via the mouse pointer with display on the screen. It would be nice to be able to extract the fixed data and dynamic data for the planets into a printable text file. It would also be attractive to be able to invert the presentation so that having given a planet and a date it would be possible to use the Ephemirides data to display the planet. 4.6 Many body problem 4.6 The calculation and display of the positions of the planets and stars by Spacetech’s Orrery makes heavy demands on the processing power of the ARM-2 but they are met in an acceptable way. No indication is given of the calculation method used or the accuracy of the data. Questions about Planet ‘X’ or ‘10’ are currently being discussed and users should be aware of how orbital irregularities are incorporated. 4.6 Perspective issues 4.6 There are enormous variations in distances, light intensities and relative sizes in the solar system so any representation has to reflect a compromise based upon the primary area of interest. 4.6 The control panel window allows the user to select a time granularity from 1 minute to one of many years; the screen can also be frozen for detailed inspection. This enables the detailed study of such different phenomena as sunrise and the out of plane orbital motion of Pluto. This is an excellent facility and can be run forwards and backwards in time. A small quibble is that it would be nice to be able to freeze/unfreeze a screen on a toggle key without having the control panel window displayed. 4.6 The control panel can also be used to display the orbital motions of all the planets or gradually to focus on the inner planets. A similar magnification facility would benefit the simple linear graph. 4.6 Documentation 4.6 The manual was helpful as far as the introduction and installation were concerned. The layout of the section on menu selections should be improved and made more systematic but it was adequate for an introduc tion. There is a useful glossary provided of astronomical terms although we feel that the explanations could have been fuller and easier. Also, it would have been useful to know the basis of selection for the set of stars displayed and whether they are fixed or moving. 4.6 Installation 4.6 The installation instructions were straight forward and worked. The installation procedure assumes the user is familiar with the desktop environment. It is good that the product is capable of simple backup. The disks are magnetically version marked but not in text on the outside of the disk. The files supplied are different from those given in the text; Glossary is omitted from the text while Or_Setup is used in the text whereas Now and Intro are on the disk. These in no way affected the installation but perhaps could be misleading to someone not familiar with the desktop environment and seeking to proceed systematically. The manual claims that Orrery is RISC-OS compliant and certainly we have been able to run it at the same time as Impression Junior. 4.6 Summary 4.6 In Orrery, Spacetech have produced an excellent model of the solar system which will be used by many would-be astronomers with great pleasure and interest. The underlying scientific model should be made available. The software is robust and covers the scope stated in the documentation. It can be installed quickly and easily. Orrery makes heavy demands on the ARM-2 and can appear sluggish. A 4.6 4.6 Honeypot Lane 4.6 Peter Thomson 4.6 This is a well presented package of story books and computer programs aimed at the primary school. Resource, who produce the package, suggest that it should form the basis of an approach to primary technology. 4.6 The elements of the package are linked by an imaginary village. One large format book is well illustrated, perhaps suitable for the class teacher to read to a class of infants. The other three stories seem to be aimed at an older age group, with each page of text facing a picture. 4.6 The first program displays a very long sprite, a picture of the village and its surroundings. The user can scroll this picture horizontally. Clicking the mouse pointer on the screen displays the name of the object or a line of story about that scene. Clicking on the front door of the castle lets you in to explore the castle. On certain house doors you can also move inside but the number of rooms is very limited. 4.6 A group of young girls who worked with the program found this great fun until they had explored the whole area, but then complained that there was nothing more to do. A picture of Albert the mouse can be hidden in the various rooms for others to find and this provided more stimulus for a short time. The girls would have liked to add their own story and more details to the picture, but the program does not allow this. 4.6 I looked at the programming to see what could be done. The long sprite of the village can be loaded into !Paint so that changes can easy be made to that, but the messages in the program are all in the form of data statements and changes would require a lot of programming experi ence. This is a pity, because the idea for this program is a good one, and the messages could easily have been included as a file so that new stories could have been written. 4.6 When I looked at the second program, I hoped to find that this would let the children produce their own story in the same format as the first but this is not the case. It is designed to produce a story made of single pages of text and graphics, displayed one page at a time. The picture can be built up from a library of simple shapes or from a large number of well drawn sprites. I found the procedure to select sprites from a file on one disc, transfer them to a second disc and then place them on the screen to be very messy — too complex for young children. The text editing facilities are also very limited. When a story is being displayed on the screen, much time is wasted as whole files of sprites are read from disc for each page. 4.6 The sprites themselves are excellent. The children already know how to use !Draw and !Paint. They were very excited by being able to add these to their own drawings. (You need to rename the main program from BASIC in order to display the files). 4.6 Neither program is RISC-OS compliant or compatible and I couldn’t use them with my Taxan monitor because they deleted VIDC utilities and then adopted a non-compatible mode. 4.6 Also included with this package is a very expensively produced file entitled “A teachers guide to Primary Technology”. It is a comprehensive list of possible ideas for using honey-pot as a stimulus for technology, but with little practical guidance for those new to this area. Also, some of the links to the package are a bit tenuous. 4.6 Conclusion 4.6 If the first program with its long village sprite and captions was available separately, I would recommend it. Overall, this package has limited value as a stimulus for primary school technology. There are much better practical guides for teachers available elsewhere. A 4.6 4.6 4.6 Norwich Computer Services 96a Vauxhall Street, Norwich, NR2 2SD. 0603−766592 (−764011) 4.6 4.6 Aleph One Ltd The Old Courthouse, Bottisham, Cambridge, CB5 9BA. (0223−811679) (−812713) 4.6 Apricote Studios (p22) 2 Purls Bridge Farm, Manea, Cambridgeshire, PE15 0ND. (035−478−432) 4.6 A.S.T.E. Syracuse 10 Alastair Crescent, Prenton, Wirral, L43 0UR. (051−608−5469) 4.6 Atomwide Ltd (p18) 23 The Greenway, Orpington, Kent, BR5 2AY. (0689−838852) (−896088) 4.6 Base5 (p51) PO Box 378, Woking, Surrey GU21 4DF. 4.6 Beebug Ltd 117 Hatfield Road, St Albans, Herts, AL1 4JS. (0727−40303) (−60263) 4.6 CJE Micros 78 Brighton Road, Worthing, W Sussex, BN11 2EN. (0903−213361) (−213901) 4.6 Clares Micro Supplies 98 Mid dlewich Road, Rudheath, Northwich, Cheshire, CW9 7DA. (0606−48511) (−48512) 4.6 Chalksoft P.O. Box 49, Spalding, Lincs, PE11 1NZ. (0775−769518) 4.6 Cogent Software 30 Norton Way North, Letchworth, Herts, SG6 1BX. (0462−673017) 4.6 Colton Software (p12) 149−151 St Neots Road, Hardwick, Cambridge, CB3 7QJ. (0954−211472) (−211607) 4.6 Computer Concepts (p30/31) Gaddesden Place, Hemel Hempstead, Herts, HP2 6EX. (0442−63933) (−231632) 4.6 Dabhand Computing 5 Victoria Lane, Whitefield, Manchester, M25 6AL. (061−766−8423) (−8425) 4.6 Data Store 6 Chatterton Road, Bromley, Kent. (081−460−8991) (−313−0400) 4.6 Design Concept (p 17) 30 South Oswald Road, Edinburgh, EH9 2HG. 4.6 Electronic Font Foundry (p32) Bridge House, 18 Brockenhurst Road, Ascot, SL5 9DL. (0344−28698) 4.6 HS Software 56, Hendrefolian Avenue, Sketty, Swansea, SA2 7NB. (0792−204519) 4.6 Ian Copestake Software 10 Frost Drive, Wirral, L61 4XL. (051−648−6287) 4.6 IFEL (p41) 36 Upland Drive, Plymouth, Devon, PL6 6BD. (0752−847286) 4.6 Lingenuity (Lindis) (p36) P.O.Box 10, Halesworth, Suffolk, IP19 0DX. (0986−85−476) (−460) 4.6 Longman−Logotron Dales Brewery, Gwydir Street, Cambridge, CB1 2LJ. (0223−323656) (−460208) 4.6 Minerva Systems Minerva House, Baring Crescent, Exeter, EX1 1TL. (0392−437756) (−421762) 4.6 Musbury Consultants 8 Fairhill, Helmshore, Rossendale, Lancs, BB4 4JX. (0706−216701) 4.6 Oak Solutions (p11) Cross Park House, Low Green, Rawdon, Leeds, LS19 6HA. (0532−502615) (−506868) 4.6 Pandora Technology Ltd 9 St Marks Place, London, W11 1NS. (071−221−9653) (−9654) 4.6 Ray Maidstone (p4) 421 Sprowston Road, Norwich, NR3 4EH. (0603−407060) (−417447) 4.6 RESOURCE Exeter Road, Doncaster, DN2 4PY. (0302−340331) 4.6 RTFM Software 43 Hill Street, St Hellier, Jersey JE2 4UA. (0534−67870) (−68996) 4.6 Silicon Vision Ltd Signal House, Lyon Road, Harrow, Middlesex, HA1 2AG. (081−422−2274) (−427−5169) 4.6 Simtron Ltd (insert) 4 Clarence Drive, East Grinstead, W. Sussex, RH19 4RZ. (0342−328188) 4.6 Storm Software$$ Beth House, Poyntington, Sherbourne, Dorset. (0963−22469) 4.6 The Serial Port (pp27 & 35) Burcott Manor, Wells, Somerset, BA5 1NH. (0243−531194) (−531196) 4.6 VisionSix Ltd (p29) 13 Paddock Wood, Prudhoe, Northumberland, NE42 5BJ. (0661−33017) (−36163)7 4.6 4.6 Government Health Warning − Reading this could seriously affect your spiritual health. 4.6 We have continued to pray for all who have been caught up in the Gulf conflict and are grateful to God that the fighting is now over. Even so, we must continue to pray for the leaders of the nations involved, that they might bring about a just and lasting peace in the region. 4.6 The ending of the Gulf War is also particularly important for the people of sub-Saharan Africa. This is because the Gulf War has diverted the world’s attention away from the terrible plight of those suffering from, or heading rapidly towards, famine in Africa. So, let’s hope and pray that some of the suffering in Africa can now be averted. We will shortly be sending a donation to TEAR Fund to help with African famine relief and we would urge you to join with us, either by sending money direct to a relief agency, or by sending it to us and we will direct it through TEAR Fund. Thank you. 4.6 The VATman strikes again 4.7 The main reason that this issue has followed the previous one so rapidly is that our beloved Chancellor of the Exchequer has increased the VAT rate from 15% to 17.5%. As a result, everyone like us, who quotes VAT inclusive prices, will have to change their adverts, price lists etc, etc!! This will also mean that some of the prices quoted in reviews and Products Available may not be correct. We’ll try to check them if possible, but I hope you’ll forgive us if we miss any. 4.7 Also, if you are ordering anything from us, please use the new Price List, not the old one, because the prices have increased by the extra VAT element. If you send a cheque which is too small to cover the cost of the goods you order, it will cause complications and delay, so PLEASE DESTROY ALL OLD PRICE LISTS. Thank you. 4.7 Another ‘one-up’ for Impression II 4.7 The very fact that I have been able to get this magazine out so soon after the previous one is another accolade for Impression. It just would not have been possible with PageMaker on the Mac. (By the way, I’ve not had any response yet from Beebug about whether they are going to use Ovation to prepare Risc User.) 4.7 All the Archive staff wish you a Very Happy Easter! 4.7 4.7 Products Available 4.7 • A540 fan quieteners − Ray Maidstone has now designed fan quieteners for the A540 but they are unfortunately not user-fit devices. Contact Ray on 0603-407060 for more details. 4.7 • ALPS Compression Disc − Alpine Software have released a sprite compression utility which can compress mode 12 sprite down to something like 30% of their original size. Mode 15 sprites are compressed even more − some down to as low as 6% of their full size but, on average, around 25%. The application which is only available from Alpine Software is £19.95 inclusive (post free). 4.7 • Atomwide high speed drives − Atomwide are doing some new SCSI drives. The first is a high speed (17 ms) 48M Quantum Pro drive. The prices are £540 for an internal drive and £620 for an external drive. The other drive is the Connor 100M drive as supplied in the Acorn A540. These are also, we think, 17ms drives and are available for £740 (internal) or £840 (external). (More details in the SCSI Column on page 9.) 4.7 • Atomwide removable drives − Atomwide are also doing some 42M removable SCSI drives. They use exactly the same drive mechanism as the MicroNet drives and they work out a little cheaper. (But with the extra VAT, you’re back to the number you first thought of!!) The prices are now £795 and £595 with and without Oak podule respectively, or £775 with Lingenuity podule. (More details in the SCSI Column on page 9.) 4.7 • Children’s pictures − Micro Studio have produced a new library pack of draw and paint files − over 150 in all − aimed at children. The new pack, at £19.95 inclusive, has pictures of animals, toys, people, shapes and objects and signs. 4.7 • Colour screen conversion − Human Computer Interface Ltd have produced a piece of software called Colour Screen»Mac which will convert colour & monochrome images between the Macintosh and the Archimedes or Windows 3.0 on the IBM PC. The cost is £95 plus £2.50 p&p +VAT. They also do an Archimedes to Mac connecting cable for £20 +VAT. 4.7 • Concept Designer from Longman Logotron enables the user to create and use overlays on a Concept Keyboard and even has an emulator so that you can develop software for use with a CK without having one attached to the computer. The price is £24 +VAT from Longman Logotron or £26 through Archive. 4.7 • Diet Manager − Yes, for the weight-conscious Archimedes owners, here is a multi-tasking application that will allow you to keep track of all those calories (and proteins and fats). This program from MEWsoft, priced £27.90 inclusive would also be useful in schools for health education. 4.7 • Draw format lineart − Southern Printers have produced the first of their lineart discs. The price of this first disc is just £5.50 inclusive. They are aiming to keep the price down to a level which should deter copying since lineart does tend to ‘migrate’ very easily from computer to computer! For more details, see the review on page 41. 4.7 • !Draw Help − After the success of Sherston Software’s !Help companion to the Archimedes, they have now produced one for !Draw. This package consists of a 96 page tutorial book plus a disc full of clip art plus a !Draw quick reference card. The package is available for £15.95 (no VAT). 4.7 • Fast array sorting routines − Avisoft have produced a set of fast ARM code shell sort routines. Contact Martin Avison for more details. Address in Factfile. 4.7 • First enhancement − Serious Statistical Software have announced a new context sensitive online help system for their ‘First’ statistical software package. This upgrade is just £25 (no VAT). The cost of the full ‘First’ package is still £150. 4.7 • Hawk V12 video framestore is the latest product from Wild Vision. At £1990 +VAT (+£5 carriage) it provides a very powerful image processing and analysis system for the Archimedes. This double width podule can store up to four images, 512 x 512 in 256 grey levels. 4.7 • PD library − Westbourne Services have just started a PD library for the Archimedes. The discs are £1.50 each. Westbourne Services will supply a sample disc and catalogue for £1. (We mentioned this last month but lost the address. Sorry!) 4.7 • Midnight Graphics Draw Clip Art − Set one, six discs full for just £29.95 +VAT. 4.7 • Taipei 2 − The first offering from Black Sheep Software is an updated version of the Mah Jong patience game, Taipei, released originally on Shareware Nº 31. Black Sheep have responded to criticisms of the original version voiced in Micro User and Archimedes World and have added some extra features. The price is £9.95 inclusive from Black Sheep. 4.7 • Viewpoints − an interactive environment for the Archimedes from Sherston Software. Aimed at school children, it allows them to use a map and explore the village, seaside, surrounding countryside and even under water. As they wander, they can stop and see if there is anything of interest and can take snapshots of what they see. They can also zoom in and take a better look at things. Viewpoints contains all sorts of starting points for various types of written and oral work and includes geography and mapping skills as well as information storage and retrieval skills. The Viewpoints Database is £35 +VAT from Sherston Software. 4.7 • !VoiceBuilder − MJD Software’s multi-tasking RISC-OS application designed to work alongside Maestro, Rhapsody etc to create new voices. Libraries of waveforms and envelopes are provided and can be manipulated freely. The software, which is MIDI compatible, allows control of attack, looping, release phases etc. After creation, the modules can be immediately accessed from BASIC or other languages or from other applications. 4.7 Review software received... 4.7 We have received review copies of the following software and hardware: Carewares 4 and 6, !Voice-Builder from MJD Software, Longman Concept Designer, Design Concepts’ Outline Fonts and Software disc, Taipei 2, Avisoft Fast Array Sorts, ASTE Syracuse disc magazine, PRES A3000 5¼“ interface & software, Morley Teletext adaptor front end software. A 4.7 4.7 Government Health Warning − Reading this could seriously affect your spiritual health. 4.7 Although this is likely to reach you after Easter, (I am writing before Easter) I would just like to ask you to find a little time over the next few days to think about the significance of the death and resurrection of Jeus. 4.7 To the outsider, Jesus’ death looks like the defeat of a well-meaning teacher who upset the ‘powers that be’ and his resurrection looks like a blatant act of wishful thinking. 4.7 However, if you study it more deeply, you will find that the cross is the most wonderful point of triumph − not defeat. The powers of evil were smashed by that one loving act of self-sacrifice − and it’s not just “an example for us to follow”. It would be pretty pointless if that’s all it was. No, there is a deep spiritual truth about the cross... which I haven’t time to go into now, but it’s described in, “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” by C.S.Lewis. On one level, it’s a children’s story, but at a deeper level, it’s a very powerful allegory of the death and resurrection of Jesus. Read it and see what you think. 4.7 4.7 Small Ads 4.7 • A3000 1Mb upgrade (Morley expandable) £50, CC ROM/RAM podule £25, Archimedes SpellMaster ROM £30. Phone Mr H McDonald on 04243-4500. 4.7 • A3000 Midi/user interface £30, Acorn DTP £80, Rhapsody £30, Arcwriter £10, Acorn Umbrella £20, A3000 Carry-case £25. Contact Geoff Bailey on 04867-80632. 4.7 • Armadillo Sound Sampler + MIDI, 8 bit stereo, with HighNote control software, £115. Phone Rob Browning on 0242-231540. 4.7 • Original software − Lot 1, £15 = The Pawn, UIM, Presenter II, Startrader, Minotaur, Quazer. Lot 2, £25 = Interdictor II, Terramex, Repton 3, Arcade 3, Talisman, Zarch. Lot 3, £10 = EFF fonts Albert, Sophie and Tamsin. Phone John Crabtree on 0803-832505 4.7 • Second Internal 3½“ disc drive, previously installed in an A310, £75 ono. Phone Mr C Dawson on 0253-700578 or 0283-36044. 4.7 • Wanted single drive fascia for A310, also MEMC1a chip. Phone Mr C Dawson on 0253-700578 or 0283-36044. 4.7 • Wanted single drive fascia for A310. Phone Bill Foyster on 0769-60289. Also 2nd 3½“ drive for 310 £50. 4.7 Charity Sales − The following items are available for sale in aid of charity. PLEASE do not just send money − ring us on 0603-766592 to check if the items are still available. Thank you. 4.7 (If you have unwanted software or hardware for Archimedes computers, please send it in to us. If you have larger items where post would be expensive, just send us details of the item(s) and how the purchaser can get hold of them.) 4.7 User Guides £2 + £3 postage, Acorn 2-slot BP £15, Euclid £25, Arcwriter £5, Acorn ROM/RAM podule £18, CC ROM/RAM +128 RAM £40, Global View £4, Twin £10, Interdictor 1 £6, Superior Golf £9, Trivial Pursuit £9. A 4.7 4.7 Base 5 4.7 From 4.6 page 51 4.7 4.7 4.7 CC 4.7 From 4.6 page 30 4.7 4.7 CC 4.7 From 4.6 page 31 4.7 4.7 Hints and Tips 4.7 • Ballarena − I would advise using the mouse to control your ‘bat’ because the keyboard is not very responsive. Also, note that the ‘Auto’ bat does not always respond fast enough to catch the ball, and there is nothing you can do about it! I was very disappointed in the final message which just congratulates you, and ends your game. The passwords are: PUNKANDJUMP, MONTPELLIER, SEA SEX SUN, VL 86 C 010, MOUNTAINEERS, GRENOUILLE, BLUBEDILOMAR, BRAIN KILLER, RHYTHM BOX, BOUBOULOID, MENFOU, 32 BIT POWER, MARTINI, SEE YOU SOON, ETERNA. Mike Gregory (& Russell Lamb). 4.7 • Changing !Edit’s default file types − Answering my own Help!!! plea in Archive here’s how to change the default filetypes for !Edit: 4.7 *DIR ADFS::4.$.RISC-OS.!Edit 4.7 (or your path here) 4.7 *GOS 4.7 *L. !RUNIMAGE 8000 4.7 *BREAKSET 8004 4.7 *GO 8000 4.7 *SAVE “!RUNIMAGE” 8000+1F2C0 4.7 8008 8000 4.7 *BASIC 4.7 *L. !RUNIMAGE 8F00 4.7 $&1B208=“ReadMe” These can be changed 4.7 $&1B214=“DataFile” to suit your needs 4.7 $&1B220=“ExecFile” with any string up 4.7 $&1B22C=“EditFile” to 10chars in 4.7 $&1B238=“!Run” length. 4.7 *SAVE !RUNIMAGE 8F00+1F2C0 8008 8000 4.7 Rob Davison, Southland, New Zealand 4.7 • ‘Cheapo’ dialog boxes − You can make use of Wimp_ReportError instead of writing code for a dialog box when programming wimps. The following code fragment is an example: 4.7 DEFPROCsave_file(name$) 4.7 IF FNfile_there(name$) THEN IF 4.7 FNdialog(“A file of that 4.7 name exists. Overwrite it?“)=FALSE THEN ENDPROC 4.7 REM save file 4.7 ENDPROC 4.7 4.7 DEFFNdialog(str1$):!block%=1 4.7 :$(block%+4)=str1$ 4.7 SYS“Wimp_ReportError”,block%, 4.7 19,“Message from 4.7 applic“ TO ,resp% 4.7 =resp%=1 4.7 where the string “Message From Application” is <20 characters in length. 4.7 The only disadvantages are that all other desktop activity is suspended, the machine beeps (if wimpflags bit 4 is not set) and that the user has to answer “OK” or “CANCEL” instead of the more logical “YES” or “NO”. However, this saves a great deal of programming and can be very useful at times (This is why FWP2 stops printing − See Archive 3.10 p 25). Rob Davison, New Zealand. 4.7 • Cleaning A310 keyboard contacts − I recently had a very nasty intermittent fault on my A310. It began as a line of 222222222’s being printed at the cursor, for no apparent reason. Also the ‘2’ key of the numbers keypad wouldn’t function occasionally. This was accompanied by a more worrying symptom where the screen display would suddenly go hay- wire and only occasionally would right itself after switching the machine off and then on. 4.7 Eventually, it was cured by cleaning the key-contact of the ‘2’ (keypad) and on the basis of “If it works, don’t fix it”, I didn’t clean any other keys. After having the machine checked at a local dealer (£17.50) and some discussion with Archives’ Technical Help, it was assumed that the screen break-up was due to CMOS *Configuration settings somehow being changed to Monitor-Multisync, by the spurious keyboard input. The problem has not occurred since. 4.7 For anyone else with keyboard problems, here’s how I cleaned mine: Lay the keyboard upside-down and remove all 8 screws under the keyboard base and gently lift off the base. Remove the 6 larger screws, securing the PCB to the keyboard top-cover. Lift out the complete PCB and keys unit. The keytops are all secured in a frame which is, in turn, secured by 20- odd small screws from the PCB underside. Take them all out (and put them somewhere safe) and, keeping the whole kaboodle together with a firm grip, turn it over and set it down right-side up. The complete set of keys can now be lifted slowly off the PCB, exposing the rubber contact/ covers. These are glued with a weak glue. I found that all the rubber bits stayed stuck to the PCB. I gently peeled away the rubber contact/ cover at the offending key position and marvelled at how the dirt had managed to penetrate so far, considering that the cover was stuck down. The keyboard key contacts (A310) are just gold plated discs of PCB copper, easily cleaned with switch cleaner and a non-hairy paper-towel or cloth. If you have to blow away any bits, use a camera ‘puffer brush’. If you have to use your mouth to blow away grit, crumbs etc, wait for any teeny drops of condensation to evaporate. Spit doesn’t make a good contact cleaner and some spirit-based cleaners may tend to dissolve the pcb-surface varnish which will be smeared over the contacts’ surface. Your local electronics hobby shop (e.g. Tandy) should have cans of switch-cleaner at £2 − £3 (which is a lot cheaper than £120 for a new keyboard(!) and well worth the extra effort of DIY). 4.7 D.P.Allen, Surrey 4.7 • Data cartridges for tape streamers revisited − Further to the hint in 3.6 p2, the metal variety of DAT can become unreliable after three or four writes and so it is better to use the non-metal variety e.g. Memorex tapes. Mr Chapman, London 4.7 • RISC-OS printing hints − Printing out with the RISC-OS printer drivers is very easy. However I found several areas which are not well explained and one or two things which are down right misleading! 4.7 • PRM pages 1526-1528 sprite plotting commands must be with reference to the address of the sprite not the name, so if you use 4.7 SYS “OS_SpriteOp”,&122, 4.7 spriteaddr%,“name”,0 4.7 ,xpos%,ypos% 4.7 then, when printing, the error “Sprite Not known” will be returned. The solution is to use &222 and an address instead of the sprite name. Addresses for a named sprite can be found with 4.7 SYS“OS_SpriteOp”,&118 4.7 addr is in R2 on exit − see PRM page 406. 4.7 • PRM page 1532. Always use −1 (for current) as the destination mode with “ColourTrans_Select-Table” if you specify a mode (even the current one) ColourTrans will not set up the table correctly resulting in strange looking sprites on printout. 4.7 • When rendering Draw objects remember to decrease ‘flatness’ to a lower value. A useful way of calculating it is to divide the default (512) by the print resolution divided by 90 eg. flat= 512/(printxres%/90) where printxres% might be 300 − as read from 4.7 SYS “PDriver_Info” TO,printxres% 4.7 printyres% the 90 comes from a normal approximately 90 dots per inch on screen. Rob Davison, Southland, New Zealand 4.7 • Saving the CMOS RAM settings − In recent editions of Archive (e.g. 4.3, p.10 and 4.5, p. 21) there have been repeated mentions of the problem which arises when a battery failure deletes all the information in the CMOS RAM. 4.7 There is one very simple way of solving this problem: On Careware Nº 6 you will find the application !SysUtil by Jon Marten; one of the choices it offers is “Save Configuration”! 4.7 All you have to do is copy the Utility and the “ConfigFile” it produces to some disc where they are easily accessible − not the hard disk! 4.7 After the dreaded memory loss you simply load !SysUtil and drag the ConfigFile icon onto the !SysUtil icon and confirm that you want to change the configuration. Jochen Konietzko, Koeln, Germany 4.7 • Shutdown of hard drives − During the recent experience I have had due to the volume of hardware I’ve been setting up and testing, the following items have come to light. 4.7 MR45’s seemed to be suffering from corruption but, when reformatted, the problem went away, so where did the corruption come from? 4.7 A little further investigation revealed that a verify scan caused the Closedown procedure of the drive not to occur. 4.7 It was found that, in order to close the drive down properly, a *bye and two ªShutdowns were required! At first, this was thought to only relate to MR45’s but, in fact, it has been found that this is not so, and even my own machine (A440/1 with standard Acorn hardware) does similar things. 4.7 So, how do you know whether your hard drive is shut down properly? If an <f12> is followed by a *bye, a staccato blip from the drive LED should occur and a short sharp click noise should emit from the drive itself. This is not the closedown condition. 4.7 A *shutdown will now give a flickering performance from the drive LED and a multiple clicking from the drive lasting about half a second.This is the shutdown condition with the heads parked and isolated from the discs and closedown of the system can now occur. Ray Maidstone, Norwich. 4.7 • !UIM_Hack update (cf Archive 3.10 p 9) − This utility allows you to edit characters in The 4th Dimension’s U.I.M. game. It has now been updated and improved by the author, David Sheperdson, and has been put on this month’s program disc. 4.7 Impression Hints and Tips 4.7 • Beware thin lines − It seems that Impression can’t cope with the very thinnest lines that Draw can produce. It does not display them properly on the screen and sometimes doesn’t print them properly. The answer is to use 1 mm lines instead. This came to light when Brian Cowan was using graphs generated by the graph plotting utility (on Shareware Nº 31) which apparently uses these thin lines. (This has only been tested in version 2.05.) 4.7 • Double-clicking on a graphic opens the “alter graphic” window, (For those who don’t read manuals.) 4.7 • Help! − Does anyone know how to create a new Master Page based on an existing master page? It’s a real pain to have to change the margins every time you create a new master page. Why can’t you have a new master page just slightly different from an existing one? The particular application was where I wanted to try two, three, four, five columns etc. for a document and every time I wanted to change the number of columns, I had to create a new master page, changing the margins from to the 5 mm I wanted before changing the number of columns and the inter- column gap. (Mind you, I did find one short-cut as a result of having to do this over and over again. If you click in the first margin box, you can use <ctrl-U> to remove the “12.7mm”, then press <5> and then <down> will move you to the next box and you can repeat the <ctrl-U>, <5>, <down> for each box. This applies to most of the dialogue boxes − <down> moves you to the next box requiring input. Yes, I know it says this in the manual, but I didn’t see it.) 4.7 Anyway, can I put my plea another way? Is there any way of editing a master page other than sliding the boxes around? Can you edit, by entering numbers, the sizes of the margins, for example? 4.7 • Search & replace again − We mentioned last month that, when doing a find and replace, <ctrl-N> finds the Next occurrence, <ctrl-R> does a Replace of the marked text. Be warned though that, if the find box is on-screen, <ctrl-A> no longer deletes the character at the cursor (as <copy> does) it forces All the replaces to occur from the cursor downwards to the very end of the document. I found this the hard way while attempting to do a selective search and replace at the top of a large document. I was changing a column of words into a list by replacing 4.7 with a comma and a space. You can just imagine the havoc that the “replace all” command reeked on my (unsaved!!!) document. You have been warned! By the way, <ctrl-E>, presumably relating to Every or End, has exactly the same effect as <ctrl-A>. (This has only been tested on 2.09.) 4.7 • Transferring text between documents − In Archive 4.2 p.8, there was a hint about the transfer of text between two documents. The implication was that this was not possible with Impression. This is not true − it is just done differently. You select the text in question, press <ctrl-C>, move to the appropriate spot in the other document, click once and insert the text with <ctrl-V>! Jochen Konietzko, Koeln, Germany A 4.7 4.7 Atomwide 4.7 From 4.6 page 18 4.7 4.7 SCSI Column 4.7 Paul Beverley 4.7 There are some more developments on the SCSI front that make it worth having a SCSI Column again this month. 4.7 New SCSI software from Oak 4.7 At long last, Oak Solutions have released the new software for their SCSI podules along with a new SCSIForm program. (Anyone who has an order outstanding for this new software should have received it by now, so if you haven’t, do get in touch with us.) 4.7 So what’s the difference? Well, not a lot for users of fixed hard drives, but for those of us who are making use of MR45 removable drives, life will be somewhat easier. If you want to change cartridges, all you do is dismount the drive and it spins down to a stop; you put in the new cartridge and mount it by clicking on the disc icon and it spins up and opens the new filer window. 4.7 If you do what I did and put in the new ROM and try it out, you will find that it doesn’t seem to work − you dismount the drive and it keeps on spinning! However, if you then put in the new SCSIForm disc and read the readme file (which you should have done first!) you will find what you have to do. 4.7 You run the SCSIForm program and <R>emove the MR45 from the drive list and then <A>dd it again answering <Y>es to the three questions about STOP, START and PREVENT and then <N>o to EJECT. If you are using partitions on your disc, consult the ReadMe file before going any further − I don’t use PCemulator or Unix, so I haven’t sorted any of that out. 4.7 One thing you will have to remember with removables is to quit your wastebin before dismounting the drive otherwise it will spin down then immediately spin up again as the multi-tasking wastebin tries to access it again! 4.7 Moving drive icons 4.7 One thing that you will find which is slightly disconcerting is that the hard drive icons move about on the icon bar! When you start up, the icon bar just shows the hard drive(s) with SCSI4, SCSI5 etc but as soon as you mount one of the drives, it reads the drive name and displays it on the icon bar. The trouble is that, the way RISC-OS works, the SCSI software has to remove the icon and then add it back again so it appears at the far right of the set of icons on the left of the icon bar. Dismounting a drive also moves the icon to the end of the line. 4.7 New ranges of Oak SCSI drives 4.7 Oak Solutions have rationalised their ranges of SCSI drives into three basic types: WorraWinnie, High Speed and Elite. 4.7 WorraWinnie: These are roughly equivalent in performance to the original SCSI drives which Oak produced although some of them may be slightly slower than before. They are, however, rather cheaper than before and the external drives are in slightly more compact cases. The internal 45M drives, for example, are available at an Archive price of £450 compared with the previous price of £525. They are guaranteed for 12 months. (One other difference is the cabling − see below.) 4.7 High Speed: These are, as the name suggests, faster drives than the WorraWinnies and they are in a rather more substantial metal case. The 40M, for example, runs at about 800 Kbytes/sec with an effective average access time of between 11 and 16 ms (see the speed table) whereas the 45M WorraWinnie will be more like 600 Kbytes/sec and an access time of 24 ms. The internal 40M drive is £530 which is roughly the same as the original, slower, 45M drives. The High Speed drives are guaranteed for a full two years. 4.7 Elite: These external drives are the same Quantum Pro drive mechanisms as the High Speed drives but they are built in such a way that they will come up to the stringent new r.f.i. standards that will come into force in 1992. They are also guaranteed for the full two years. 4.7 Additional drives 4.7 An increasing number of people are ordering SCSI drives without podules. (They are just £100 less than the prices quoted on the Price List since those prices include the SCSI podule.) If your intention is to use it as a second drive with an existing drive, it is important to make this clear when you place your order. We will then be able to change the internal links on the drive before sending it to you. The link changes are necessary because no two devices are allowed to have the same ID number and drives are normally sent out as ID zero. It involves taking the drive out of its case, so it is obviously preferable if you allow us to do that for you. 4.7 The other very important point to note is that external WorraWinnies (to keep the cost down) do not have spare connectors to allow daisy- chaining. They just have a flying lead (with an IDC connector on the end) coming out of the back of the drive. This cable plugs directly into the back of the SCSI card. So, if you want to use any other external device alongside a WorraWinnie, you will need to think about the cabling. The best thing to do, therefore, is to contact us and we will sort out your requirements for you before you place your order. We can provide all the necessary cabling. 4.7 High speed SCSI drives 4.7 One of the advantages of SCSI is that, at the moment, “everybody’s doing it”. SCSI drives are becoming available for all the more commonly used computers whose names I will refrain from using. High volume production, of course, means lower prices such as we have achieved by using removable drives that were being sold into the Apple Mac market. (They have gone down in price again and so, even with the increased VAT rate, they are still the same price.) In the same way, we have managed to find some extremely cheap and extremely fast fixed 48M drives produced by ZCL who are also selling them into the Atari and Commodore markets and for PC’s − there, I’ve said it! 4.7 They are actually 52M Quantum Pro drives that format to about 48.6M; they have an average access time of 17ms (or 11 to 16 ms − see the table) and run at up to 1,000 Kbytes/sec (yes, 1Mbyte/sec) using an Oak SCSI interface. The “alternative test” that we use (copying a large directory with many files) takes under 7 secs. The table below shows various comparisons. The Archive prices are £530 for an internal 48M drive with podule and £620 for an external. 4.7 Atomwide high speed SCSI drives 4.7 Atomwide are also doing some new SCSI drives. The first is the same 48M Quantum Pro drive as the one ZCL are using but mounted in their own boxes (in the case of external ones) or mounting brackets (in the case of internal ones). The prices are the same as the ZCL ones (£530 and £620). The other drive they are doing is the Connor 100M drive as supplied in the Acorn A540. These are 17ms (we think) drives − they are very fast, anyway − and are available for £740 (internal) or £840 (external). 4.7 The following Archive price comparison may help you see if it is worth considering any of these drives. The prices include Oak podule, (increased!) VAT and carriage and the figures in brackets are the price per Mbyte. 4.7 4.7 Internal drives 4.7 WorraWinnie 45M £450 (£10.00) 4.7 High Speed 40M £530 (£13.25) 4.7 Atomwide 48M £530 (£11.04) 4.7 ZCL 48M £530 (£11.04) 4.7 Atomwide 100M £740 (£7.40) 4.7 External drives A300/400 4.7 WorraWinnie 45M £500 (£11.11) 4.7 Removable 42M £795 (£18.93) 4.7 High Speed 40M £740 (£18.50) 4.7 Atomwide 48M £620 (£12.92) 4.7 ZCL 48M £620 (£12.92) 4.7 Atomwide 100M £840 (£8.40) 4.7 External drives A3000 4.7 WorraWinnie 45M £500 (£11.11) 4.7 Removable 42M £795 (£18.93) 4.7 High Speed 40M N/A 4.7 Atomwide 48M £620 (£12.92) 4.7 ZCL 48M £620 (£12.92) 4.7 Atomwide 100M £840 (£8.40) 4.7 Speed Comparison 4.7 Speed File Access 4.7 Kb/s Test (s) Time (ms) 4.7 45M W-W 660 27.6 24 4.7 45M Removable 590 10.6 20 4.7 40M HS 810 8.5 17 (11-16)* 4.7 48M Atomwide 980 6.6 17 (11-16)* 4.7 48M ZCL 980 6.6 17 (11-16)* 4.7 100M Atomwide 800 9.3 17? 4.7 *Quantum say that although the average access time is 17 ms, because the drives have such a large “look ahead” buffer (64k), the effective access times are more like 11 to 16 ms depending on the actual application. 4.7 Removable drive problems 4.7 To ensure that we don’t get accused of selling things under false pretences we are repeating the warning we gave in Matters Arising last month. 4.7 By now, we have had enough experience of the MR45 drives to spot a couple of weaknesses. 4.7 First of all, it looks as if the Syquest mechanisms aren’t too happy if they are allowed to run too hot − you can get data errors as a result. The cooling fan is underneath the case so, firstly, you must never put the drives on a soft surface where the feet might sink in and allow the openings around the fan to become obscured. Secondly, given that the drive is on a hard surface, don’t pack other things too closely around it, especially at the rear left which is where the fan is, because this again could inhibit the air flow. 4.7 The warning about susceptibility to heat came from someone using them in a Mac environment but I also learned it myself the hard way. I had the MR45 packed tightly between the computer and plastic filing tray and I put my WS3000 modem on top of it, which itself runs quite hot, and topped it off by putting a great pile of papers on top of the modem. When I suffered a disc error and lost a couple of articles, I moved the drive to a more open position away from the computer (the cables are 1.5m long, so that’s no problem) where I wouldn’t be tempted to cover it with paperwork. 4.7 The second weakness is that it looks as if the auto-parking of the heads is not infallible. In other words, if you regularly switch the power off without dismounting the drive (which is bad practice, anyway), it is possible that you may get disc errors eventually. So, you have been warned − always remove the disc before switching off the power. The problem, of course, is that you cannot allow for power failures but these occur a lot less frequently than switching the power on and off yourself. What we are therefore saying is that these drives are not 100% reliable. In fact, Oak Computers have now decided not to supply 45M removable drives any more because they don’t feel that the drives fit in with their “zero defect” policy. 4.7 How then can we justify continuing to sell them? Well, as long as you know what you are buying − and we are not making any secret of the drives’ limitations − it is up to the individual to decide if it is worth the risk since we cannot, of course, guarantee you against any data loss. 4.7 The main reason that we are continuing to sell them is that they are just SO convenient and that there is nothing else that is currently available, at a sensible price, that will do the same job. (Magneto- optical drives are reliable, but at £3,800, they are not realistically priced for the average user. 4.7 I am using MR45’s all day, every day and I am prepared to take the risk because, as I said, they are just so convenient for me. All the material for the magazine, and a lot of other transient data, is held on one cartridge which I take backwards and forwards between home and the office. Before I had the MR45’s, I had to use floppies to carry the text back and forth, copying it to and from the hard drives at each end which was a real pain. I had to remember to copy files to floppy and then remember to copy the modified versions back onto the hard drive in the office. As it is, I know that I will always have access to the most up- to-date information and all I have to remember to do is bring the MR45 cartridge home with me. Because I am aware that there is always the possibility of data corruption, I back up all the current files onto the fixed hard discs fairly regularly and, so far, I have not lost any data. 4.7 New removable drives (& prices) 4.7 Atomwide are also now producing removable drives for the Archimedes. They are the same Syquest drive mechanisms that are used in the MicroNet MR45’s. One noticeable difference, however, is the fan. Atomwide have used the most powerful one they could find to try to make sure the drives don’t over-heat. They have also placed it at the rear of the box and not underneath. In terms of looks, I think this one tones in better with the Archimedes than the MicroNet drive, so I would, personally, go for the Atomwide drives. The prices are £795 and £595 with and without Oak podule respectively (or £775 with Lingenuity podule). 4.7 One good effect of the arrival of the Atomwide drives is that we’ve been able to force a further price drop on the MicroNet drives and we’ve been able to get them down to the same price as the Atomwide drives despite the VAT increase. 4.7 SCSI connecting cables 4.7 There are a number of different connectors used for connecting SCSI devices, so if you are mixing and matching different podules and drives, you need to know what cables and connectors are needed. Basically, there are three types: IDC, Amphenol and 25-way D-type. 4.7 The IDC connectors consist of two rows of 25 pins − the type used on the drive mechanisms themselves and on the Oak SCSI podules. 4.7 The Amphenol connectors are the same style as the so-called Centronics connectors used on most parallel printers except that they are 50-way instead of 36-way. These are the type used on both the Acorn SCSI podules and most external SCSI devices Thus, if you have one SCSI device and want to daisy-chain another device, you will need to buy an Amphenol to Amphenol cable. 4.7 The 25-way D-type connectors are the same style (and size, in fact) as the printer connectors on the back of the Archimedes. These are the type used by the newer Lingenuity podules. 4.7 (Personally, I don’t think that this is a good choice of connector because, if someone non-technical is trying to connect a SCSI drive to the computer, there is a choice of two identical sockets. I don’t know whether a wrong choice of connector is likely to cause electrical damage, but it would certainly cause confusion! OK, the Mac fraternity have been using 25-way D-types for their SCSI’s since the early days, but why follow a bad example?) 4.7 Four useful combinations of connector are now available through N.C.S. at £15 each − IDC to IDC, IDC to Amphenol, Amphenol to Amphenol and 25- way D-type to Amphenol. A 4.7 4.7 File Handling for All 4.7 Mike Allum 4.7 I was interested to review this book because my post-graduate project requires some data file handling on an Archimedes. Since all my previous experience was in function-strong systems (machine control) I had created and used the odd data file but never on such a scale as now. 4.7 As a result, this review is from the point of view of someone who can handle the technicalities but is (was!) unaware of the subtleties of the subject. 4.7 This book is 143 pages long organised into nine chapters. A comprehen sive index, bibliography and some appendices round it off. Short example programs are included in the text. These are written in BBC BASIC and many of them are available, in augmented form, on the program disk which is available separately. 4.7 How it works 4.7 The chapters progress from simple data storage/retrieval through to basic database concepts. Each chapter has a definite theme and, if followed through, will build the skills required for the following chapter. 4.7 The earlier chapters account for most of the programs which are short and easily typed in. The later chapters have the majority of the diagrams and tables, most of which are clear and to the point. 4.7 Where a technique is introduced, it is often presented with a list of its advantages and disadvantages. When the reader has been thoroughly disenchanted with it, the next best method is then trotted out. 4.7 Conclusions 4.7 The first thing to stress is that the techniques learnt here are almost all generic. With the exception of the odd Acorn-specific area and the use of BBC BASIC, this book could be used by anyone wishing to learn about file techniques. 4.7 The audience itself would be from the complete novice up to, say, a first-year degree student requiring a quick insight into file handling. 4.7 Teaching method 4.7 The method of starting small and introducing new techniques one-by-one is admirable and serves to make the book a model of clarity. I would compare it with Ken Stroud’s superb mathematics books in its ability to educate the reader. 4.7 The readability is further improved by the lack of ambiguity. So many of my student texts (and, indeed, so many modern design methodologies) are rendered nearly useless by the author “casting his net too wide”. This book may gloss over the occasional point or occasionally ignore a “better” technique but you can be sure that it is in the interests of clarity. 4.7 Due to the index, this is certainly a book which can be occasionally “dipped” into within the constraints of the audience outlined. 4.7 Overall, a most readable primer. 4.7 Program disk 4.7 The program disk is documented in the book itself and my only criticism would be that the programs themselves should be commented. The disk itself was of limited use to me personally but would be useful to the novice. 4.7 File Handling for All on the BBC Micro and Acorn Archimedes by D Spencer & M Williams is published by Beebug Ltd. (ISBN: 1-85142-087-8). The book is £9.95 and the disc £4.75 plus postage from Beebug. A 4.7 4.7 Capsoft Disc Nº 1 4.7 John Schild 4.7 The other day someone handed me a copy of a home-grown Parish Magazine. The merest glance was sufficient to reveal that it had been produced using Impression II. The give-away? − those very familiar Impression frame borders. 4.7 There’s nothing wrong with an identifiable house style but few of us would want our own to be quite indistinguishable from all the others. Which is why I suspect there will be a welcome for this first disc-full of goodies being marketed privately by B. J. Thompson. It is crammed (not a spare byte to be found!) with draw-fonts and frames for DTP, including as a bonus for Impression users, 18 ready made Impression frame borders. The draw fonts (upper case only) have been designed for use as dropped capitals and for poster production. 4.7 Acorn Draw files and outline fonts, when used in conjunction with such innovations as Laser Direct, have broken down the barrier between cheap and cheerful home produced stuff and the high-tech output we expect of the glossies. Consequently, anyone aspiring to sell artwork for the Archimedes must be aware that they are pitching at an increasingly discriminating market. Also, as the supply of Acorn public domain discs multiplies, the asking price can only be modest. 4.7 I can only express my own view that this Capsoft offering meets any reasonable criterion of quality and can be recommended. If there is a criticism, it is that too much detail has been added to the corner motifs of some of the Impression borders, such that, at the smaller sizes at which they might be used, only an undifferentiated mass is visible. To his credit, the programmer has acknowledged this problem by offering a number of different versions of his borders. Illustrated are Aston draw-font S, surrounded by IntSqu10. Eye-catching, but how do you prevent black frames looking funerial? 4.7 Capsoft 1 is available on prepayment of £6.00 from B.J. Thompson, at 8 Oldgate Avenue, Weston-on-Trent, Derbyshire, DE7 2BZ. A 4.7 4.7 Colton 4.7 From 4.6 page 12 4.7 4.7 PipeLine 4.7 Gerald Fitton 4.7 Thanks again to all who have written to me. This month, the major part of my column is devoted to a continuation of my description of how to print labels; but ﬁrst a couple of other matters. 4.7 Macros 4.7 Alan Highet asks about a macro for changing his printing quickly from RISC-OS printer drivers to PipeDream printer drivers. The macro record facility <Ctrl-FY> records mouse movements so it’s possible to record a couple of macros, one called Parallel and the other RiscOs which will do this for you. On the Archive monthly disc, you will ﬁnd a couple of such macros. You will probably have to change the ﬁle name of the PipeDream printer driver to match your own. Drag the ﬁle Parallel over the PipeDream icon, change the ﬁle name and the path to that of your printer driver and resave the ﬁle. Whenever you want Pipedream printer drivers, just double click on the macro and it will do the job. The macro RiscOs will reverse the operation. 4.7 I use ligatures with RISC-OS drivers. A ligature is one character ‘ﬁ’ which replaces the two characters f and i (or ﬂ for f l). The macro Ligatures (on the Archive monthly disc) will Search and Replace all occurrences of f i with ﬁ and f l with ﬂ. Again, just double click on the macro and the job will be done. 4.7 When I started this PipeLine column, one of the things I expected to happen was that there would be an abundance of macros (just like the short programs which appeared for Wordwise). It did not happen at ﬁrst but now I’m beginning to see signs that, whilst I was right in princi ple, I was wrong on the time scale. Please do send me your (recorded) macros on a disc. 4.7 PipeDream$Path (Macro) 4.7 If you know how to do it, please include this system variable (or the <PipeDream$Dir> system variable) in your PipeDream macros so that others can use them from their own directories without having to amend the path names. 4.7 Periodic table 4.7 Dr Alan C Jarvis tells me that he has a database, in PipeDream format, listing about 10 properties of about 103 elements. If you are inter ested, write to me and I will pass your letters on to Dr Jarvis. 4.7 Interword ﬁles 4.7 It seems that, to register a <Tab> or <CR>, Interword changes the following character to a top bit set character. Has anyone unscrambled this code? I suggest that the Interword ﬁle be loaded directly into Pipedream, a Search & Replace macro run, followed perhaps by saving and reloading the ﬁle to convert [&09] characters back to Tabs. 4.7 Printing labels 4.7 There are two ways of printing labels from database ﬁles such as [Girls] where each row is a record and each column a ﬁeld. One method uses the lookup function to ﬁnd the names and addresses in a dependent document held in memory; that is the method I described in the January 1991 PipeLine column. The second method uses data from a parameter ﬁle held on disc. In turn, this second method can be implemented in either of two ways. The ﬁrst is to use a roll of tractor feed labels and PipeDream printer drivers and the second is to print onto sheets of A4 labels using a page printer with RISC-OS printer drivers. 4.7 Tractor feed labels 4.7 Although you can buy rolls of tractor labels which are more than one label wide, generally, the additional problems that this creates is not worth the slight reduction in cost per label. I shall assume that you are using single width labels but, if you aren’t, I suggest that you have a look at the paragraphs below on using page printers because I think they will help you. 4.7 For the example, I am going to use the database ﬁle [Girls] which appeared in the January 1991 PipeLine column but is shown here as ﬁgure 1. This ﬁle, together with all those referred to in this article, is available on the Archive monthly disc and on the April PipeLine disc. In addition to your PipeDream format database, [Girls], you’ll need two more ﬁles; the ﬁrst is a template for a single label which I shall call [OneLabel], and the second is a Tab format parameter ﬁle containing data extracted from your database, [GirlsTab]. 4.7 The template 4.7 Using this method, each label is treated as a single page. The ﬁle [OneLabel] is the template for this single page. Click on the installed PipeDream icon to create a new blank document and save it under the name OneLabel; <Ctrl-FS> is the short cut for renaming and saving a ﬁle (at the same time) if you don’t want to use the menus. 4.7 Most tractor feed labels are 1.5“ between labels; at 6 lines per inch this gives a page length of 9 lines per label. Set your page length to this number of lines. Click <menu> and run the pointer through Print − Page layout and set the Page length to 9. I prefer to set all margins to 0 so that what I see on the screen is what will be printed (What You See Is What You Get − WYSIWYG). 4.7 My label has three columns; for your own label you might prefer only one or two. Figure 2 is a screen dump of the ﬁle [OneLabel]. The ﬁrst column is used to set the left margin as 3 characters. In the second column, from rows 3 to 7, I have Name, Character, Present, Eyes and Hair corresponding to the ﬁve ﬁelds of my database; I have changed the order from that of [Girls] just to prove that you can print your label in a different order from the order of the ﬁelds in the database. In the third column you will see I have the @ ﬁelds @0@, @3@, @4@, @1@ and @2@. Note that, although the girls’ names appears in the database ﬁle, [Girls], in the second column, B, the parameter which ﬁnds the name in the label template ﬁle [OneLabel] is @0@ (and not @2@) because the girls’ names will be stored in the ﬁrst column, column number 0, of the parameter ﬁle [GirlsTab]. 4.7 It is important that you use no more than the 9 lines allocated to your label; the label will be printed exactly as you see it on the screen (including the width of the columns) with a couple of blank lines at the top of the label and a couple of blank lines below. Setting the page length to 9 will ensure that the two lines, 8 and 9 are skipped over by the printer before starting on the next label. 4.7 The parameter ﬁle 4.7 This is the ﬁle called [GirlsTab]. Load your database ﬁle, [Girls], and mark the block containing the data which you wish to use on the label. From ﬁgure 1, you will see that this is the block B8F15 containing the details of the eight girls. Save this marked block to disc as [GirlsTab] using the option Files − Save − Save only marked block and click in the Format Tab box to turn it on (instead of using the default PipeDream format). If you have a more complex database, you may wish to sort it ﬁrst or save only a selection of rows (e.g. people who still owe you money) so that only part of your database is saved as the Tab parameter ﬁle. 4.7 Printing the labels 4.7 Having saved the parameter ﬁle to disc, you can remove the database ﬁle, [Girls], from the screen leaving only the label template ﬁle, [OneLabel], on the screen. 4.7 Now invoke the Print command. Click on the option Print − Print − Use TAB parameter ﬁle and type the name of the parameter ﬁle, [GirlsTab], into the dialogue box. When you click in the OK box, all your labels will be printed. 4.7 Problems 4.7 Two more points. Firstly, be careful to set the dip switches inside your printer in such a way that things like Skip over perforations do not confuse the printer into thinking that the page length is other than the 9 lines you have set from within PipeDream. Secondly, don’t try to use proportional spacing. 4.7 If you have any problems then write to me enclosing, on disc, a copy of part of your database, your label template and parameter ﬁles. Also send, on paper or better on a handwritten label, a copy of what you are trying to achieve. I’ll see if I can help you. 4.7 Page printer labels 4.7 You can get A4 sheets of labels with one, two, three or even four columns and four, ﬁve, six or eight rows but the one most used is three labels wide and six labels deep. I shall concentrate on this layout but the instructions are applicable to any format of label. 4.7 This time you need not two but four extra ﬁles. The ﬁrst two ﬁles, the template ﬁle [OneLabel] and the parameter ﬁle [GirlsTab] are created in the same way as described for tractor feed labels. 4.7 The print list 4.7 The third ﬁle, which I have called [GirlsList], is created by popping up the Print − Print submenu and, instead of printing to the printer you select the option Print to File. Enter the ﬁle name [GirlsList] in the ﬁle name dialogue box and click on OK. 4.7 A couple of things to look out for. Firstly, when printing to the ﬁle make, sure you have selected as your Print − Printer conﬁguration − Printer type the Parallel option. If you use the RISC-OS drivers, you will send a graphics dump to your [GirlsList] ﬁle. Secondly delete completely the name of the Print − Printer conﬁguration − (PipeDream) printer driver so that the dialogue box is blank. If you don’t do this then you may introduce unwanted printing codes into your [GirlsList] ﬁle. 4.7 Changing one column to three 4.7 I ﬁnd it best to create a blank label sheet, mine is called [ManyLabels], put a few marks on the page and print a single page. I then adjust the column widths and page lengths until I am sure that my ﬁnal layout will match the labels. I have chosen my three columns each to be 24 characters wide so that the whole set of three labels will ﬁt across a 72 column screen. Also, I have chosen the page length to be that of six labels, namely 6 by 9 = 54 lines. Delete any registration marks you have made, place the cursor in cell A1 (click in A1) and then drag the ﬁle [GirlsList] into the blank label sheet. 4.7 You should get something which looks like ﬁgure 3. You have one column of data with the data for a new label every ninth line. What you need is a ﬁle with three columns to match the labels. To do this you divide the labels in column A into three and use <Ctrl-BM> (Block Move) to move one third of the labels into column B and the last third into column C. 4.7 Printing 4.7 The above description works if you use a constant pitch font such as Courier (Acorn’s Corpus) on your labels or if you leave out the ﬁeld names (Hair, Eyes, etc). It is more difﬁcult, but not impossible, to use a proportional font such as Helvetica (Acorn’s Homerton) and include ﬁeld names or graphics. Essentially, if you want the ﬁeld names or a graphic (eg a logo) on each label then you will need more columns in the [ManyLabels] ﬁle and you will need to load the graphics or data to each column individually. I’ll get round to an explanation of how to do that in a later article but, for now, either leave out the ﬁeld names and graphics or use a ﬁxed spaced font. 4.7 Finally, make sure that you change the printer driver back to RISC-OS before printing. You can use a print scale factor, adjust the margins or adjust column widths retrospectively if you have gauged the label positions incorrectly. 4.7 Problems 4.7 Send me a set of disc ﬁles, an explanation of what you want to achieve and a blank sheet of labels. I’ll see what I can do for you. 4.7 A different database format 4.7 From John Jordan comes the idea of using a multi-row record format as a database. Essentially John has a key ﬁeld (e.g. surname) in column A and the multi-row name and address (ready for a 9 row label) in column B. Other data can be stored away in columns C, D, etc. When he wants to print a set of labels he marks column B and prints out the marked block. I think this is simple and ingenious. Watch this space for further details. 4.7 The (long awaited) PUI 4.7 In the June 1990 PipeLine column I gave a brief description of the way that Colton Software’s mouse driven PUI add-on would work. I believe that it is now available but only direct from Colton Software. For those of you with the June 1990 edition of Archive I suggest that you go back and have a look and see if it might be of interest to you. If you haven’t got that edition or if you want to know more about it then drop a line to Colton Software, Broadway House, 141-151 St Neots Road, Hardwick, Cambridge, CB3 7QJ (preferably enclosing a self addressed label and stamp) for full details. Please mention this column in your letter to Judith or Robert (letters only, no ’phone calls please). 4.7 Essentially, the PUI overcomes many of the problems associated with unwanted text reformatting due to making a mistake when you have selected an unsuitable set of options. The most annoying combination is with Wrap, Insert on return and Justify, all selected when using a multi-column layout. If you decide to delete a single character in one column then that column reformats from that point downwards and your carefully tabulated layout is destroyed. 4.7 The Z88 4.7 Thanks to those of you who have told me you have one of the wonderful little machines. Jill now uses ours so much that I might have to get a second one for my own use! Using the Z88 PipeDream she types up the documents she wants printed, we then port them across to the Archimedes and print them out on the laser printer. I’ve created a (tractor feed type) ﬁle of labels on the Archimedes, ported it across to the Z88, connected a dot matrix printer to the RS232 port of the Z88 and printed the labels. This has freed up the Archimedes for other laser printer jobs. If you have any problems in linking these two machines then please drop me a line. If you have any advise then drop me a line too. 4.7 In conclusion 4.7 Thanks for all the words of praise I keep getting from you about this column. Now let’s have a few criticisms as to how it might be improved! 4.7 If you send anything substantial then please let me have it on a disc. It makes it easier to understand and easier to deal with. A 4.7 4.7 Oak 4.7 From 4.6 page 11 4.7 4.7 Techsoft 4.7 New 4.7 4.7 Improving your Archimedes’ Audio Quality 4.7 Jeremy Mears & D.P. Allen 4.7 Jeremy starts... With the latest release of the Serial Port’s ‘Tracker’, details were published of a small alteration that could be made to an Archimedes to “phenomenally” improve the quality of audio output. The purpose of this article is to elaborate on that, giving exact details of the operation for both Archimedes and A3000. 4.7 As it currently stands, the Archimedes is fitted with a low-pass audio filter to compensate for the poor bass capacity of the internal speaker. Unfortunately, the same filtered signal is fed to the headphone jack socket at the back of the computer, now lacking most of the higher frequencies and making all output taken from this socket sound pretty deflated. It is possible, however, to bypass the filter and tap off the complete audio spectrum to an amplifier or other device. 4.7 Depending on whether you have an A3000 or other Archimedes, the operation is different. Inside the A300 / 400 (and presumably others) there is a 10 way jumper plug located near to the headphone jack socket at the back of the computer. This consists of two rows of 5 pins, the top row numbered 1 and the bottom numbered 2. The left pin of row 1 is the signal from the lefthand channel and the right pin is the right channel. All the pins in row 2 are earthed. All that has to be done is to take the output straight from each of the two channel pins and connect the ground wire to any of the grounded pins. Because of the jumper plug there is no need to do any soldering to the board − instead leads can just be fixed to the relevant pins which can easily be removed if necessary. 4.7 On the A3000, there is no jumper plug so you do have to solder directly to the motherboard which would invalidate your warranty. Should you choose to go ahead with the operation, you can tap off the left channel from the keyboard side of resistor 86 and the right channel from the keyboard side of resistor 99. The connection to ground is probably best made to pin 1 of the expansion port, on the inside the computer. 4.7 Once these connections are made, you will notice a great improvement on music and particularly samples at higher rates − in fact samples taken directly from CD into my 8-bit sampler are now very comparable with CD quality! 4.7 An added bonus is that the annoying buzz that the Archimedes normally emanates all over the audio signal is completely gone! One drawback of the modification is that with some games such as Interdictor II (5 KHz!) and Manchester United, the poor quality sampling shows up as a few of the samples sound ‘tinny’. 4.7 I made the modification several months ago and, on hearing the improve ment, all of my friends have followed suit. Certainly, once you’ve got over the mental trauma of maybe invalidating your warranty and particu larly if, like myself, you are a bit of a Soundtracker buff, this is a simple modification that I would wholeheartedly recommend. A 4.7 (By the way, it’s no good saying, “Archive told me to do it” − you will still be invalidating your warranty. You have been warned. Ed.) 4.7 And here are a few extra comments lifted from a hint sent in by D.P. Allen... 4.7 Improved audio output frequency range − The auxiliary audio connector provides obtain unfiltered audio. This means you get increased top-end frequency response, which is like comparing FM radio to medium-wave quality. You can fit your machine with another audio output socket, quite easily, without altering your machine’s case. 4.7 Lifting the lid on the Archimedes, you will see that the connector is a group of ten pins, called an IDC PCB-mounted connector, near the headphone socket at the rear right-hand edge of the PCB. 4.7 Our pins are: 1.unfiltered left-channel, 9.unfiltered right-channel and 2, 4, 6, 8, 10. screen/earth. Pins 1 & 2 are identified on the PCB, so you will see that one row of pins is odd, one row even. 4.7 The connector is intended for a ribbon cable. There may be audio podules which use it. (None that I know of. Ed.) This mod is just a couple of plugs and a short lead, so is easily removed. 4.7 A ten-way IDC socket can be purchased from any electronics hobby shop, (e.g. Tandy). As only three pins are used for this ‘add-on’, ribbon cable is not needed. The three wires will need to be about 6 inches long. A 3.5mm stereo jack socket is also required. I suggest using the type of 3.5mm socket that would fit on the end of a length of cable (referred to as an in-line socket) rather than the type you would mount on a front panel. Make sure it’s not the type that shorts its contacts when you remove a plug from it. This won’t blow up your Archimedes but if you want to use the filtered audio output, the ‘shorting-type’ socket will connect the two stereo channels together so that the unfiltered socket will become mono and, in some cases, rather distorted. 4.7 The three (stranded) wires can be pressed into the IDC socket’s wiregrips and the clamp-top closed with pliers or in a vice. This type of connector makes contact by cutting through the wires’ insulation as the clamp is closed, so if you’re new to wiring, you may find it easier to use a piece of ribbon cable in which, because each wire’s insulation is welded to the adjacent one, they are all in line for the connector’s pins. 4.7 From inside the case, pass the lead(s) through the same hole used by the existing headphone socket and solder the three wires to the appropriate tags on the 3.5mm socket. (after passing them through the jack socket’s cover!) Plug in the IDC connector and away you go. 4.7 Surprisingly, I found no increase in background noise level. In fact there was less. I can still plug into the existing socket, if necessary. 4.7 The two leads connecting the headphone socket to your stereo AUX sockets should be screened. Long unscreened leads can act as an aerial. I found that with a 3 metre unscreened lead to my stereo amplifier, I picked up Radio Moscow at dusk! A 4.7 4.7 The Serial Port 4.7 Archive 4.6 p 27 4.7 4.7 Comment Column 4.7 • Mike Beecher writes... about the Clares/EMR clash(?) in your Comment Column (4.3 p16 & 4.5 p 15) − I should like to put your readers comments into perspective! Mr Leslie Hay who wrote in February 1991, purchased an EMR Midi 4 from us on the 20th April 1989. At that time, EMR were the only company producing any Midi products for the Archimedes (as far as we are aware, the Acorn music editor was yet to have Midi in its later Maestro version) and it was quite likely therefore that some comment was made on purchase that our EMR Midi 4 would work with the Midi software. (However, we could never say that it is guaranteed to work with all Midi software for obvious reasons.) 4.7 Secondly, at the time of developing the EMR Midi 4, there was no Acorn specification of SWI calls for Midi available. Since then, we have purchased, under licence from Acorn, the use of various Midi source code to enable us to sell a software module on disc. Since this had to be paid for at no little expense and required additional programming time at EMR, we feel it quite fair to charge £6.95 inc VAT for this disc − especially as there has been no price increase in EMR Midi 4 boards. There is little profit for any company in a price as low as this anyway. 4.7 Finally, we do not have a clash with Clares as you question in your heading. In fact, Dave Clare, along with myself and several other major software houses, spend a large part of our time travelling with Acorn showing our various products each year. 4.7 To help readers’ knowledge and better understanding of Archimedes computer music, we do offer free technical advice on the telephone most days of the week and provide training courses for computer music on the Archimedes at our Southend Computer Music Learning Centre. Information on courses and a full brochure of over 28 products now produced by EMR for making music, are available direct from EMR. 4.7 • Routines Library − In Archive 4.2 p 18, Elliot Hughes introduced the idea of a column to collate routines, algorithms & programming ideas in general. I have long thought that it would be incredibly useful to draw on a large database of routines which are known to produce correct results under given conditions. I believe the hallmark of good program ming lies in the basic structure of the program. If you can develop routines to do particular tasks very efficiently, you have the basis of an expandable library. 4.7 Routines which would be of interest, range from the frequently used to the unique solution to a complex problem. Once you have a routine which performs a particular task then the next time the same problem arises, as they invariably do, you have a ready made solution. Effort can then be directed to solving the overall problem rather than “re-inventing the wheel”. 4.7 Objectives 4.7 • Build a library of varied routines 4.7 • Provide solutions to problems in a particular language 4.7 • Optimise routines for maximum efficiency 4.7 • Answer common programming problems 4.7 • Provide a forum for discussing programming techniques 4.7 • Help prevent programmers from “re-inventing the wheel” 4.7 Types of routines 4.7 • sorting 4.7 • searching 4.7 • data input 4.7 • screen handling 4.7 • file handling 4.7 • lists, queues, stacks, trees etc 4.7 • solutions to a problem in a particular language 4.7 • that incredibly useful routine you’re sure you once saw in an old magazine, that you are now convinced would solve your current program ming dilemma 4.7 • common everyday routines (e.g. make a string upper case) 4.7 • weird & wonderful 4.7 • miscellaneous 4.7 Alexander Bisset A 4.7 4.7 Powerband 4.7 Leonard Melcer 4.7 Not being a great fan of all these mindless “Shoot ‘em up” games, I tend to look for the more meaningful ways to pass my spare time. Powerband is the new game by Gordon J Key from 4th Dimension, although it is more of a simulator than a game. You are a Formula One racing driver, out for the hell of it (Fun mode), competing on a track of your choice against the best of the rest (Game mode) or making your bid to be the next world champion (World Championship mode). 4.7 Playing the game 4.7 Loading the game is fully desktop compatible, unlike some earlier 4th Dimension games, and presents an opening screen of the Powerband logo and copyright information. A picture of a racing car then appears and the theme tune of BBC2‘s motor racing program − “The Chain” by Fleetwood Mac − starts up. You then switch discs to the “Tracks” disc and are prompted to enter your name. Finally, the main menu appears and you may begin to race. 4.7 The main menu allows you to select whichever mode you want. In Fun and Game mode, you can choose the racing track you want to race on, via the Airport, which shows you the track from above along with fastest times recorded. Unlike some other games, new fastest times are recorded and saved on the disc in your name, so you can prove to everyone that you broke the lap record. In World Championship mode, ten of the sixteen available circuits are randomly selected for you. You then compete over a minimum number of laps, which differs according to the particular track you are on, to gain points in the race to be the champ. In Game and World Championship mode, you first have the opportunity to race against the clock, to improve your position on the grid, by hopefully recording a new fastest lap and getting pole position. 4.7 Before each race, you can visit the garage to modify the car to suit your driving abilities, different engine sizes, gearboxes (4-speed automatic, 5 or 6 or 7-speed manual, or 5 or 6 or 7-speed electronic), steering ratio (the sensitivity of the mouse for steering), the tyre compounds (soft, medium or hard), and the angles of the front and rear aerofoils (controlling under-steer and over-steer). 4.7 You really have full control over the car you want to drive. No excuses − you choose the configuration. Each option directly affects the way in which the car handles in terms of its top speed, cornering abilities, acceleration and braking abilities. 4.7 The car is controlled using the mouse, with <adjust> being the accelera tor, <menu> the brakes and, with manual gearbox selected, <select> the clutch. The automatic gearbox is the easiest to handle, but with only four gears, is rather slow. The manual gearbox, with up to 7 gears available, is the hardest to control, requiring the coordination of accelerator, clutch and gear selection which, by the way, is selected by the <up-arrow> and <down-arrow>. The electronic gearbox is the easiest to control, you just press the <up-arrow> or <down-arrow> to move up or down a gear − no clutch necessary. 4.7 Cornering too fast causes you to notice a number of things. Firstly, squealing noises from the tyres. Both high-pitched and low-pitched, indicating under-steer and over-steer respectively. This can be changed by altering the angles of the aerofoil, although this does have the disadvantage of slowing you down a little. Secondly, associated with squealing, the tyres can wear too quickly and you may not be able to finish the race. This can be remedied by using hard compound tyres, which wear well but do not have the same grip as soft or even medium compound tyres. Thirdly, and most obviously, you are driving too fast. The cure? − slow down! 4.7 You can drive too fast and it will not actually help. This is not one of those games where going flat out will help. You cannot drive with your foot (or in this case, finger) pressed firmly down the whole time. A little judgement and skill is required to be able to corner successfully (incident free!) by finding the right line to take. I have had a little Formula Ford racing experience and can say that this game really does make me feel like I am back on the track. Of course, the consequences of a 260 mph head on crash is where any similarity ends. 4.7 Unlike real racing driving, if you hit a wall or barrier, all is not lost! You do get a number of “lives”. A really severe crash, like going into the side of a grandstand, would result in immediate “retirement” but grazing the side of another car or skidding along a barrier, simply reduces your resistance to further crashes. As with other similar computer games, every time you get hit, you suffer a power drain. 4.7 One thing that bugs me is the competition. I do not mean, “Wouldn’t it be great not to have any”. It’s just that they do tend to play rather dirty, by which I mean that they are very unpredictable. However careful I am overtaking other cars, I always find myself hitting them, or rather, they hit me, by slowing down and moving directly in front of me! 4.7 Conclusions 4.7 Problems with overtaking other cars does not mar my enjoyment of the game, as it simply increases my awareness at the time I come up behind another car. The laps are in real time, ranging between one minute and two to complete. Imagine racing a seventy lap race! That is why, I presume, you are only required to race a minimum of between six and fourteen laps to qualify for championship points. It’s enough, believe me! An average championship would probably take a good two hours, probably more. You can save a competition after any race and come back to it. 4.7 Just to give you an indication of my driving abilities, I have broken the lap records of all but two of the circuits, but have only finished about five times out of X races (where X is a large number that I lost count of a long time ago!), although I have finished first on three of those five completed races. On winning a race, you are treated to a picture of someone wearing a floral bouquet, spraying champagne everywhere and the sound of a cheering crowd. 4.7 In my opinion, this is the best racing car driving game around. I think it should be a compulsory upgrade from E-Type. Anyone who hasn’t yet upgraded to version 2, should do so, because many of the small quirks of version 1 have been remedied. At around £19 + VAT from most regular suppliers or £23 from Archive, it provides endless hours of enjoyment and thrills. A 4.7 4.7 Pineapple Digitiser 4.7 Ned Abell 4.7 A digitiser is a very useful computing tool but it can also be expensive and Pineapple have done a good job in producing a product that’s of good quality and yet reasonably affordable. The board comes as a full-width podule for the 300 and 400 series and there is an optional add-on box for the 3000 user to house the card. 4.7 Drop it! 4.7 Packed to survive being thrown from the roof of a multi-story block of flats, the carton contains a hard ring binder manual with two discs and a board which has a BNC video and 9 pin D socket on the back, together with three rotary knobs to control the brightness, colour and contrast of the input image. Internally, switches are used to provide video termination if required. The software provides several programs to capture an image that is fed into the podule, to treat it in a variety of ways and to store it on disc, as well as examples of grabbed images. 4.7 Storing pictures 4.7 One of the reasons that digitisers aren’t cheap is that the boards contain quite large RAM stores which to hold the video image. Pressing a key grabs the video into this frame store and then it can then be changed by the machine’s software. Herein lies the difference between the two versions of the Pineapple digitiser − the standard version digitises an image up to 512 pixels wide by 256 pixels high and with a “depth” of 12 bits whilst the extended version grabs to a “depth” of 16 bits. 4.7 This depth is a function of how well the computer turns the actual colour at a pixel point into a value of red, green or blue, using 4 bits for each colour at 12 bits resolution and, at 16 bits, 5 for red and green and 6 bits for blue. In practical terms, you aren’t going to notice too much difference between depths but a higher resolution is going to be noticeable when you start to manipulate those images. You then need as much information as possible about each pixel point as you can get, to improve the image processing. The “565” option is the one to go for and the extended digitiser was used in this review. 4.7 Software commands 4.7 The software suite that comes with the podule provides a variety of commands for programmers to “meld” into their own routines through SWI and *calls. 4.7 *Average − produces a higher quality image on stationary pictures 4.7 *Bits − sets the depth for the displayed image 4.7 *Digitise − transfers the stored picture to a shadow screen 4.7 *Flip − flips the image horizontally or vertically or both 4.7 *Focus − de-focuses the screen 4.7 *Freeze − allows ‘grabs’ of a single incoming frame 4.7 *Image − replaces, AND’s or OR’s the new image with an existing one 4.7 *Loadsprite − loads a sprite to the screen 4.7 *Loadvideo − loads a picture saved as a video file 4.7 *Moving − provides a “monitor” window showing the incoming video 4.7 *Negative − inverts any of the primary colours 4.7 *Noise − uses averaging techniques to remove noise lines 4.7 *Outline − a picture made from the video outlines 4.7 *Primary − can switch off incoming R, G or B or combinations thereof 4.7 *Savevideo − stores the image with specific sizes and bits 4.7 For those of us who want to get on with it, there are some programs already written to provide the basics and to try out the new board but, as you can see, the range of the commands is very impressive. 4.7 Demo discs 4.7 On the Pineapple demo discs, if you run the demonstration program called !mainkeys, the screen gives an image in the centre which is updated by the incoming video. There is a time lag between each update but this provides a very basic check of what is connected to the digitiser without the expense of another television “monitor”. The controls on the podule can then be adjusted. 4.7 The best way of doing this is detailed in the manual − adjust the brightness until dark picture areas appear black and then to turn the contrast fully up and then reduce it until white areas stop “burning” and then adjust the colour to get good flesh tones. This set up is very important to get good pictures and some time spent at this stage is very worthwhile. Colour bars or a greyscale help. 4.7 Various key presses then access the software commands, for example <D> digitises the incoming video and <shift-S> saves the contents of the RAM as a sprite. There are other applications called !micci and !digitiser on the disc. !micci is a non-WIMP application that allows fairly comprehensive “point and drag” control of the digitiser and has details of an upgrade path to a more comprehensive windowing version of the software. My favourite, “!digitiser”, works in the desktop to provide multi tasking menu control with function key grabs and saves. There is also control of image position and size and this is useful to video makers like myself who want to create sprites of objects in front of a camera to position on backgrounds of live video. 4.7 Video input 4.7 The BNC or 9 pin input means that you have to present video or RGB levels to the digitiser. Thus, a video output socket from a camera or tape machine is required. This often takes the form of a phono or RCA type socket, so an adaptor lead to BNC could be needed. 4.7 If you use a video recorder, its tuner can bring broadcast signals into the digitiser. 4.7 I tried both a professional VHS video recorder and a camera into the BNC socket to check on both recorded images and live signals. Some of these captions are on the monthly disc in sparked format. I grabbed the cover of the November Archive so that you can compare the original with the sprites created through the system in different ways. I’ve also grabbed a couple of pictures to show how good the system can be in mode 24. 4.7 Verdict? 4.7 What’s the verdict? Well, it just depends... The results that you will want will be different from those I have been looking for and so judgements are likely to be rather subjective. I wanted to grab images like logos in the highest possible quality, at the lowest cost, in colour, for editing by paint packages and re-importing back into the computer to be used in “Presenter Story” as sprites in video production captions. The Pineapple Digitiser does this and I feel that the quality I get is very good for the price I paid. I’m impressed with a “565” grab of printed material in mode 24 and I have printed digitised images out through Impression and again the results are good but limited by my dot matrix printer. As I have a good camera, the cost of a digitiser is justified. This product does what I want it to do and it does it very well. 4.7 The prices are £285 +VAT for the standard version and £315 +VAT for the extended version. A 4.7 4.7 Return To Doom 4.7 Richard Forster 4.7 It always interests me how much help is given in the packing with adventure games. The two extremes, no help and comprehensive help, are about equally balanced in popularity of use but, unfortunately, a compromise between the two is rarely found. What I personally would like to see is a set of coded hints which, upon deciphering, would reveal cryptic advice. Failing this, I much prefer no hints at all because, temptation being what it is, many a good puzzle can be ruined by “a quick peep”. 4.7 “Return to Doom” comes with two other adventure games, “Countdown to Doom” and “Philosophers Quest”, and the first things I noticed upon opening the plastic case were three sets of hints. With just under 200 hints for the three games, you are unlikely to find yourself having to write to Topologika for help. To use the clues, you simply load in the correct game, type HELP and enter the number indicated in the hint list. Most of the clues are progressive, you get gentle nudging and are asked if you want more, which the program will obligingly give, telling you before it gives away the final solution. 4.7 I am sure this sort of help is actually welcomed by many people, and I definitely do not criticise Topologika for including them with the package. I would advise, however, hiding the help sheets (or better still getting somebody else to hide them) before you start play. 4.7 As well as the hint sheets, there are several other bits of paper in the box. The games have only recently been brought out for the Archimedes and owners of other machines had to get the three adventures separately. Background for the latter two games are therefore supplied on separate pieces of card and there is also a separate Technical sheet on getting the games running. 4.7 Actual playing instructions are given once, as are the standard notes with adventure games. This was, surprisingly, the cause of my only problem. In “Philosopher’s Quest”, the only way to extinguish the lamp is the single word OFF. This was probably on the instruction sheet for the game when it was supplied on its own, but was not on the one for “Return to Doom” and I spent several minutes trying things like “TURN OFF LAMP” and even “OFF LAMP” before hitting on the correct phrase. 4.7 This was a shame, because the games have been written in such a way that you are not normally spending eons trying to get the wording right. The parser on all three is basically of the old verb-noun format, but performed perfectly with the one exception already mentioned. One verb curiously absent from the adventures was EXAMINE. The reason for this, as explained by the insert card, is that the puzzles are not designed to be solved by “happening to discover things about the objects”, but by object manipulation. You get all the necessary information about an object’s appearance from its description when encountered, so it is not so much absent as automatically given. 4.7 All three adventures are on the same disc, which is protected, and upon loading, you are given a menu for selecting the three games. One curious feature was that they had to continually load data from the disk. This was surprising because the games have no graphics and, looking at the size of the files, even allowing for text compression, I could see no reason why it could not all be loaded at once. The game will run on all the Archimedes range, even a 305 without RISC-OS, so perhaps this is why. 4.7 The planet Doomawangara is the setting for two of the three adventures and these two adventures make up the first two parts of a trilogy. Doom, as it is affectionately known, is a strange place where you will find all kinds of climates, from glacier to desert, within a stone’s throw of each other. The reason for this is not made clear until the next adventure and, for now, I can only imagine they exist so as to give home for the strange creatures and artifacts that litter the planet. 4.7 In “Countdown to Doom”, you find yourself for the first time on the planet, having been shot down by Doom’s automatic defence system. You have 400 moves to repair your ship and take off, before the corrosive atmosphere leaves you stranded for life in the planet’s wilderness, although there are plenty of ways to go before all your hopes literally crumble away. The suicidal blob can still come as quite a shock, even to an adventurer who has braved the decapods and crossed the swamp. 4.7 As far as difficulty goes, this is probably about the easiest of the three games − it provides an accessible start and, while being full of original and logical puzzles, it only has a couple of really devious ones. The adventure, like the other two, contains several mazes, which are obviously a favourite of Peter Killworth, the game’s author. Fortunately (or is it unfortunately?) they all require different methods for solving and present intriguing, if difficult, obstacles. 4.7 “Return to Doom”, the main adventure in the pack, puts you back on the infamous planet after you respond to a distress call sent by a kidnapped ambassador. If the first game was lonely, trekking about the planet in search of equipment and treasure, the second game certainly is not. 4.7 A little way into the game, you should find a robotic dog, Bonzo, the not-quite wonderdog in my case and, after that, things get a lot more hectic. At least this time you do not have to worry about the atmos phere’s effect on your ship, although the weather may still be the cause of a scratched head or two. 4.7 The game is big, especially when you consider that almost every location is part of a puzzle and nearly half the hints are for this part alone. Several of the puzzles are solvable in different ways, although there is only one way of finally completing the game. By allowing this multiple choice, you should be able to explore the majority of the landscape even if the best solutions for some puzzles elude you. Reading the text carefully should help, as there are a lot of subtle clues hidden there. 4.7 “Philosopher’s Quest” is set in a network of caves and is basically in the “find the treasure” genre. What the game misses in terms of the plot it more than adequately makes up for with the puzzles and it contains, under one roof, some of the best ones ever devised for an adventure game. It is also the hardest of the three games and it may take some time to be able to start your quest in earnest. 4.7 Exploration is the key − searching around the caves, you should come up with all manner of mysterious items and places; from a solicitor’s office to a strong piece of gorgonzola, which could easily be the death of you. Journeying south a bit reveals a long beach, near where you should discover an old lady who has lost her dog, and a sunken wreck with a depressed squid. If you explore a more easterly direction, you can find the garden of Eden, the tower of Babel and you may be forced to prove your very existence. 4.7 There is even an ancient mariner with a story to tell and, like the wedding guest in Coleridge’s poem, you will find yourself engrossed until you are left in the dark. 4.7 Two of the games “Philosopher’s Quest” and “Countdown to Doom” were originally brought out by Acornsoft in the early 80’s. The versions here are expanded and are about 50% bigger than the originals. Some of the puzzles are more complex and involved, and there are many new ones scattered about the new locations. Even if you have played them on the old BBC versions, they are still excellent adventures and the new puzzles in them should keep you going for quite a while. 4.7 Overall, the compilation is excellent value for money, with not just one but three excellent adventure games. They are, in my opinion, the best adventure games available at the moment for the Archimedes. The fact they are on a compilation disk might seem to indicate that individually they are not strong enough. This is definitely not the case and the disk is worth purchasing for “Return to Doom” alone. The quality, and even quantity, of the puzzles is superb, and I would recommend the adventures to anybody. The only thing they lack is graphics, which some people may miss, although this should not be cause to reject this trio of adven tures. A 4.7 4.7 Escape from Exeria 4.7 Richard Forster 4.7 When I first received a copy of “Escape from Exeria”, it consisted solely of a crude arcade game. Since then the game has improved slightly and the disc also contains a follow-up game, “Return to Exeria”, and two mini adventures, “The Sacred Pyramid” and “The Purple Crystal of the Heavens”. The arcade games run directly from the desktop and contain adequate instructions on the disc. The adventures run from the BBC emulator and the least said about them the better. They both gave the appearance of being unfinished, consisted of a couple of puzzles between them and the most atmospheric part of the games was their titles. 4.7 “Escape from Exeria” is simply a ‘Pacman’ like maze game. You move “Ilth”, the hero of the two arcade games, through the various levels of Exeria’s cavern system, trying to collect coloured crystals while avoiding the guardians. After collecting all of the crystals of a certain colour, access to previously inaccessible areas becomes possible and, after gaining all four sets of crystals on a level, you can head for the exit. As might be expected, contact with the afore-mentioned guardians is deadly but, fortunately for the player, they follow set paths. 4.7 The graphics in the game are simple and there is a small amount of sound used when you collect items or pass onto the next level. The game can be played a couple of times but after this, tedium sets in. There are 40 screens to try out (and you can skip by pressing I, L, T and H simultaneously), but after seeing level 18, I had had enough. 4.7 “Return to Exeria” is slightly better because a problem solving element has been added. Ilth is now able to move boulders along in an attempt to plug holes and gain access to the crystals and there are various special squares which force movement in various directions or act as teleports. The guardians are back too, though not until several levels into the game and you are now also up against the clock. 4.7 The game is far more playable than the first and, by the time the guardians were appearing, the game was becoming quite challenging. The graphics and sound are again simple but it mattered far less because the game itself had more to offer. As a bonus, you also get a screen designer with it which was easy to use. 4.7 Overall, neither of the games (I’m trying to forget about the adven tures) are up to the quality of most Archimedes software. The cost of the package, however, is similar to most shareware and public domain software and, as such, is quite reasonably priced. 4.7 Escape from Exeria is available from Soft Rock Software for £3.45. A 4.7 4.7 Two ARM Assembler Utilities 4.7 Martin Avison 4.7 When writing and testing any program it is very useful to be able to follow the execution path through the program. This facility is provided in BASIC by the TRACE facility, which will display the statement number being executed. It is also easy in BASIC to insert extra PRINT state ments so that the flow can be seen and variables displayed. 4.7 These problems exist also when you are writing assembler programs, with the added difficulty that assembler programs can easily loop or overwrite unintended bits of storage, often locking up the computer completely with no clues where it is. In assembler, there is no TRACE facility and although SWI calls can be inserted to display characters or strings, the insertion can cause the program to change its behaviour due to register corruption. Breakpoints can be inserted using *BreakSet but these are limited and slow the program down. 4.7 BASIC function for assembler debugging 4.7 My solution to this was to write a BASIC function which generates assembler code to enable trace entries to be easily inserted at any point in an assembler program. All that is needed is to insert 4.7 FNdebug(“This is a message”) : 4.7 This will generate code to print the message from the parameter to identify the location and then provide a full register list, plus the flag values and then return to the program under test with all registers and flags unchanged. The debug functions can be left in the source and turned on and off for any assembly simply by setting debug to TRUE or FALSE. The code will run in User mode and also in Supervisor mode. 4.7 There is obviously some storage overhead when running with debug, which is about 300 bytes for code, which is included only once, and 13 bytes plus the length of the message for each FNdebug included in the program. It also slows the code down but you normally need to slow it down much further with <ctrl-shift> to read the debug information! 4.7 The debug function is fully documented and it needs only 2 variables set before it can be used: opt should be set to the assembler OPT value and debug should be set to TRUE to generate debug code or FALSE to omit it. Note that there must also be, included in the program, 4.7 FNdebug(“Debug_Init”) : 4.7 This will generate the common code if debug is TRUE. It should be placed after the end of the executable code. After assembly, you can use CALL showregs to obtain a register list at any time from BASIC. 4.7 The sample program DemoDebug includes the function as a LIBRARY, then assembles a short routine either with or without the debug facility, then CALLs the routine. Run the program first to see what the assembler program does (don’t get too exited!) then change line 40 to debug = TRUE and RUN the program again to see the debug function in action. 4.7 10 REM > DemoDebug 4.7 20 PRINT “DemoDebug : Demonstration 4.7 of FNdebug Version 4 4.7 Martin Avison” 4.7 30 4.7 40 debug = FALSE :REM <<<< 4.7 change to TRUE to enable 4.7 debug function 4.7 50 asmprint= FALSE 4.7 60 A% = 6 4.7 70 PROCassem 4.7 80 CALL code% 4.7 90 END 4.7 100 4.7 110 DEF PROCassem 4.7 120 LIBRARY “AsmDebug” 4.7 130 codelen% = 1000 4.7 140 DIM code% codelen% 4.7 150 4.7 160 FOR opt= %1000 TO %1010 + ABS (asmprint) STEP 2 + ABS(asmprint) 4.7 170 4.7 180 P% = code% 4.7 190 L% = P% + codelen% 4.7 200 4.7 210 [OPT opt 4.7 220 FNdebug(“Start of code”) 4.7 230 STMFD R13!,{r0-r9 ,R14} 4.7 \ save registers 4.7 240 FNdebug(“after register store”) 4.7 250 MOV R3,R0 \ store A% in r3 4.7 260 SWI “OS_WriteS” \ display message 4.7 270 EQUS “Demo”:EQUB 0:ALIGN 4.7 280 SWI “OS_NewLine” 4.7 290 FNdebug(“before loop”) 4.7 300 .loop 4.7 310 MOV R0,R3 \ put counter in R0 4.7 320 ADR R1,buffer \ address buffer 4.7 330 MOV R2,#9 \ set buffer length 4.7 340 FNdebug(“before conversion”) 4.7 350 SWI “OS_ConvertInteger1” \ convert r0 and .. 4.7 360 FNdebug(“after conversion”) 4.7 370 SWI “OS_Write0” \ output counter 4.7 380 SWI “OS_NewLine” 4.7 390 SUBS R3,R3,#1 \ decrement counter 4.7 400 FNdebug(“end of loop?”) 4.7 410 BNE loop \ go output next one 4.7 420 4.7 430 LDMFD R13!,{r0-r9 ,R14} 4.7 \ restore registers 4.7 440 FNdebug(“About to return from code”) 4.7 450 MOV PC,R14 \ return to BASIC 4.7 460 4.7 470 .buffer EQUD 0:EQUD 0:EQUD 0 \ store for conversions 4.7 480 FNdebug(“Debug_Init”) \ initialise debug 4.7 490 ] 4.7 500 NEXT 4.7 510 ENDPROC 4.7 4.7 10 REM > AsmDebug Version 11 by Martin Avison 4.7 20 4.7 30 DEF FNdebug(message$) 4.7 40 IF debug = FALSE THEN .=0 4.7 50 IF message$=“Debug_Init” THEN 4.7 60 REM create common code to display registers 4.7 70 [OPT opt:ALIGN \ assemble common routine 4.7 80 .showregs \ routine for CALL if required 4.7 90 STMFD R13!,{r0-r15 } \ save all registers 4.7 100 SWI “OS_WriteS” \ display message 4.7 110 EQUS “Register List”:EQUB 0: ALIGN 4.7 120 BL displayregs \ display registers 4.7 130 MOV PC,R14 \ return 4.7 140 \—————————————————————————————— 4.7 150 .displayregs \ display registers subroutine 4.7 160 MOV R9,R14 \ store return address 4.7 170 LDR R0,[R13,#13*4] \ get stored stack ptr R13 .. 4.7 180 ADD R0,R0,#16*4 \ and subtract 16*4 to .. 4.7 190 STR R0,[R13,#13*4] \ put it back to original 4.7 200 SWI “OS_NewLine” 4.7 210 MOV R3,#0 \ r3 is register counter 4.7 220 .nextregister 4.7 230 CMP R3,#10 \ if register < 10 4.7 240 SWILT 256+ASC“ ” \ output blank first 4.7 250 ADR R1,buffer \ address buffer 4.7 260 MOV R2,#9 \ set buffer length 4.7 270 MOV R0,R3 \ put register no in R0 4.7 280 SWI “OS_ConvertInteger1” \ convert and .. 4.7 290 SWI “OS_Write0” \ output register no. 4.7 300 SWI 256+ASC“=” 4.7 310 ADR R1,buffer \ address buffer 4.7 320 MOV R2,#9 \ set buffer length 4.7 330 LDR R0,[R13,R3,LSL#2] \ get register value .. 4.7 340 SWI “OS_ConvertHex8” \ convert it .. 4.7 350 SWI “OS_Write0” \ and output 4.7 360 CMP R3,#5 \ if after reg 5 370 CMPNE R3,#11 \ or reg 11 .. 4.7 380 SWIEQ “OS_NewLine”\force newline 4.7 390 SWINE 256+ASC“ ” \ else blank 4.7 400 ADD R3,R3,#1 \ increment register number 4.7 410 CMP R3,#16 \ if not yet end 4.7 420 BNE nextregister \ go output next one 4.7 430 4.7 440 SWI “OS_WriteS” \ display PC 4.7 450 EQUS “pc=”:EQUB 0:ALIGN 4.7 460 LDR R5,[R13,#15*4] \ get R15 into R5 and .. 4.7 470 BIC R0,R5,#%11111100000000000 000000000000011 \ lose flags 4.7 480 SUB R0,R0,#12 \ adjust pc back to start of debug 4.7 490 ADR R1,buffer \ address buffer 4.7 500 MOV R2,#9 \ set buffer length 4.7 510 SWI “OS_ConvertHex8” \ convert to hex 4.7 520 SWI “OS_Write0” \ output pc 4.7 530 4.7 540 SWI “OS_WriteS” \ display status flags 4.7 550 EQUS “ fl=”:EQUB 0:ALIGN 4.7 560 TST R5,#1<<31: SWIEQ 256+ ASC“n”:SWINE 256+ASC“N” 4.7 570 TST R5,#1<<30: SWIEQ 256+ ASC“z”:SWINE 256+ASC“Z” 4.7 580 TST R5,#1<<29: SWIEQ 256+ ASC“c”:SWINE 256+ASC“C” 4.7 590 TST R5,#1<<28: SWIEQ 256+ ASC“v”:SWINE 256+ASC“V” 4.7 600 TST R5,#1<<27: SWIEQ 256+ ASC“i”:SWINE 256+ASC“I” 4.7 610 TST R5,#1<<26: SWIEQ 256+ ASC“f”:SWINE 256+ASC“F” 4.7 620 SWI 256+ASC“ ” 4.7 630 4.7 640 AND R0,R5,#%11 \ display Mode 4.7 650 CMP R0,#%00 : SWIEQ 256+ASC“U” 4.7 660 CMP R0,#%01 : SWIEQ 256+ASC“F” 4.7 670 CMP R0,#%10 : SWIEQ 256+ASC“I” 4.7 680 CMP R0,#%11 : SWIEQ 256+ASC“S” 4.7 690 SWI “OS_NewLine” 4.7 700 4.7 710 \ now prepare to return without changing anything! 4.7 R5 = orig pc + flags 4.7 720 AND R8,R5,#%11111100000000000 000000000000011 \ lose 4.7 pc & keep flags 4.7 730 BIC R9,R9,#%111111000000000000 00000000000011 \ lose 4.7 flags from return 4.7 740 ORR R9,R8,R9 \ get orig flags + return addr 4.7 750 STR R9 ,[R13,#15*4] \ & store in r15 for return 4.7 760 4.7 770 LDMFD R13!,{r0-r15 }^ \ restore all registers & return 4.7 780 4.7 790 .buffer EQUD 0:EQUD 0:EQUD 0 \ store for conversions 4.7 800 ] 4.7 810 ELSE 4.7 820 REM create inline code to call debug code 4.7 830 IF opt AND 1 PRINT“Debug message : ”;message$;“ <<<<<<<<<<<<<<” 4.7 840 [OPT opt:ALIGN 4.7 850 STMFD R13!,{r0-r15 } \ save all registers 4.7 860 ] 4.7 870 IF message$ <> “” THEN 4.7 880 [OPT opt 4.7 890 SWI “OS_WriteS” \ write message 4.7 900 EQUS message$:EQUB 0:ALIGN 4.7 910 ] 4.7 920 ENDIF 4.7 930 [OPT opt 4.7 940 BL displayregs \ display registers then return here 4.7 950 ] 4.7 960 ENDIF 4.7 970 =0 4.7 4.7 BASIC function for assembler register using/drop 4.7 When writing assembler code, it is much better to use variable names instead of register numbers. This is a great aid to documentation and gives some chance of understanding the code when the inevitable time comes to change it. 4.7 However, whether variable names or register numbers are used, it is often very difficult to keep track of which registers are being used for what. It seems to be a fundamental law of computing that, however many registers you have, you always seem to need at least one more. This inevitiably leads to using a register for several things, which in turn leads to using a register for two things at the same time. This confuses the computer and, more so, the programmer until the error is found! This is a very common cause of strange errors in assembler code which can be very difficult to find. 4.7 What is needed is for the assembler to keep track of register usage but, unfortunately, it does not. However, due to the brilliant integration with BASIC, it is fairly easy to add this facility. 4.7 Three functions have been written, for inclusion within assembler source: 4.7 FNureg, has to be inserted into the source code before it is required to use a particular register. The register number, the variable name required and a description of its use are passed as parameters. If the register is already in use, a warning message is given. The variable, which can be either an Integer or a Real variable, can then subsequently be used in the source code instead of the register number. 4.7 FNdreg, which is used to drop a register when its use for an item is complete. The register number and its variable name are passed as parameters and checked to ensure they are what is being used. If the variable name is subsequently used, the assembler will error, as it will be set to -1. 4.7 FNlreg, can be used at any time to display a list of registers in use, with their variable names and descriptions. 4.7 Two PROCedures have been defined also: 4.7 PROCireg, which is for initialisation. It is for inclusion in the BASIC source, but within the FOR..NEXT loop for the assembly after opt has been set to the OPT value. This procedure on the first pass of the assembler creates two arrays used to store the variable names and description, and uses PROCasmfindvar to assemble a small machine code routine. It then initialises the arrays with any common register uses of your choice. 4.7 PROCasmfindvar assembles code to find the address and type of any BASIC variable, which may be of use for other purposes. If the variable cannot be found, one is created, unless it cannot be a variable name, when an error is raised. 4.7 The sample program DemoUsing includes these facilities as a LIBRARY and produces some warning messages when run. 4.7 10 REM > DemoUsing 4.7 20 PRINT “DemoUsing : Demonstration of Register Functions 4.7 Version 4 Martin Avison” 4.7 30 4.7 40 @% = &90A 4.7 50 asmprint= FALSE 4.7 60 A% = 6 4.7 70 PROCassem 4.7 80 CALL code% 4.7 90 END 4.7 100 4.7 110 DEF PROCassem 4.7 120 LIBRARY “AsmUsing” 4.7 130 codelen% = 1000 4.7 140 DIM code% codelen% 4.7 150 4.7 160 FOR opt= %1000 TO %1010+ ABS(asmprint) STEP 2+ABS(asmprint) 4.7 170 4.7 180 P% = code% 4.7 190 L% = P% + codelen% 4.7 200 4.7 210 PROCireg(opt) 4.7 220 [OPT opt 4.7 230 FNureg( 3,“counter”,“holds value of count”) 4.7 240 FNureg( 0,“a%” ,“A% from CALL”) 4.7 250 FNureg( 6,“integer%”,“some integer”) 4.7 260 \ FNureg( 4,“%Q” ,“invalid variable error”) 4.7 261 \ FNureg( 4,“a$” ,“string error”) 4.7 270 STMFD (stack)!,{r0-r9 ,link} \ save registers 4.7 280 MOV counter,a% \ store A% in r3 4.7 290 SWI “OS_WriteS \ display message 4.7 300 EQUS “Demo”:EQUB 0:ALIGN 4.7 310 SWI “OS_NewLine” 4.7 320 FNdreg( 0,“a%”) 4.7 330 FNureg( 0,“num” ,“number”) 4.7 340 FNureg( 1,“buf” ,“buffer address”) 4.7 350 FNureg( 2,“len” ,“buffer length”) 4.7 360 .loop 4.7 370 MOV num,counter \ put counter in R0 4.7 380 ADR buf,buffer \address buffer 4.7 390 MOV len,#9 \ set buffer length 4.7 400 SWI “OS_ConvertInteger1” \ convert r0 and .. 4.7 410 SWI “OS_Write0” \ output counter 4.7 420 SWI “OS_NewLine” 4.7 430 SUBS counter,counter,#1 4.7 \ decrement counter 4.7 440 BNE loop \ go output next one 4.7 450 FNdreg( 3,“none” ) 4.7 460 FNdreg( 5,“none” ) 4.7 470 FNureg( 3,“level”,“some other value”) 4.7 480 FNureg(14,“temp” ,“temp use of link”) 4.7 490 FNlreg 4.7 500 4.7 510 LDMFD (stack)!,{r0-r9 ,link} \ restore registers 4.7 520 MOV PC,link \ return to BASIC 4.7 530 4.7 540 .buffer EQUD 0:EQUD 0:EQUD 0 \ store for conversions 4.7 550 ] 4.7 560 NEXT 4.7 570 ENDPROC 4.7 4.7 10 REM > AsmUsing Version 12 by Martin Avison 4.7 20 4.7 30 DEF PROCireg(opt):REM Initialise registers etc 4.7 40 IF opt AND 2 THEN 4.7 50 regn$() = “” :REM clear for second pass 4.7 60 regd$() = “” 4.7 70 ELSE 4.7 80 PROCasmfindvar :REM first pass so initialise 4.7 90 DIM regn$(15),regd$(15) :REM arrays for name and 4.7 description 4.7 100 DIM rnam% 30 :REM buffer for name 4.7 110 ENDIF 4.7 120 REM set up standard registers as required : 4.7 130 Z%=FNureg(13,“stack”,“Stack Pointer”) 4.7 140 Z%=FNureg(14,“link” ,“Link Register”) 4.7 150 Z%=FNureg(15,“pc” ,“Program Counter”) 4.7 160 ENDPROC 4.7 170 4.7 180 DEF FNureg(regn%,regn$,regd$) :REM Use Register 4.7 190 IF regn$(regn%) = “” THEN 4.7 200 regn$(regn%) = regn$ 4.7 210 regd$(regn%) = regd$ 4.7 220 ELSE 4.7 230 PROCereg(“Using”,regn%,regn$, regd$) 4.7 240 ENDIF 4.7 250 PROCsreg(regn%,regn$,regd$) 4.7 260 =0 4.7 270 4.7 280 DEF FNdreg(regn%,regn$) :REM Drop Register Usage 4.7 290 IF regn$(regn%) = regn$ THEN 4.7 300 regn$(regn%) = “” 4.7 310 regd$(regn%) = “” 4.7 320 ELSE 4.7 330 PROCereg(“Drop ”,regn%,regn$, “”) 4.7 340 ENDIF 4.7 350 PROCsreg(-1,regn$,“”) 4.7 360 =0 4.7 370 4.7 380 DEF PROCsreg(regn%,regn$,regd$) :REM Store Register Usage 4.7 390 LOCAL addr%,type% 4.7 400 $rnam% = regn$ 4.7 410 CALL findvar,rnam%,addr%,type% 4.7 420 type% = type% AND &FF 4.7 430 CASE type% OF 4.7 440 WHEN 4 : !addr% = regn% 4.7 450 WHEN 5 : |addr% = regn% 4.7 460 OTHERWISE ERROR 999,regn$+ 4.7 “ invalid type ”+STR$(type%) 4.7 470 ENDCASE 4.7 480 ENDPROC 4.7 490 4.7 500 DEF PROCereg(type$,regn%,regn$, regd$) :REM List Error on 4.7 1st pass or list 4.7 510 IF (opt AND 2)=0 OR (opt AND 1) THEN 4.7 520 PRINT’type$“ Error for R”; regn% TAB(20) “: ” regn$ TAB(40) 4.7 “: ” regd$ ‘“Currently ”; 4.7 530 IF regn$(regn%) = “” PRINT “Unused” ELSE PRINT “used by” TAB(20)“: ” regn$(regn%) 4.7 TAB(40) “: ”regd$(regn%) 4.7 540 ENDIF 4.7 550 ENDPROC 4.7 560 4.7 570 DEF FNlreg :REM List Register Usage on 2nd pass 4.7 580 LOCAL I% 4.7 590 IF opt AND 2 THEN 4.7 600 PRINT‘“Current register usage :” 4.7 610 FOR I%=0 TO 15 4.7 620 IF regn$(I%) <> “” PRINT TAB(10)“R”;I% TAB(20)“: ” regn$ 4.7 (I%) TAB(40)“: ” regd$(I%) 4.7 630 NEXT 4.7 640 ENDIF 4.7 650 =0 4.7 660 4.7 670 DEF PROCasmfindvar :REM assemble lvblnk routine 4.7 680 LOCAL code%, codesize%, P%, L%, opt, addr, ptr1, create, 4.7 lvblnk, type, parms, 4.7 ptr2, stack, link 4.7 690 codesize%= 180 4.7 700 DIM code% codesize% 4.7 710 addr = 0 4.7 720 ptr1 = 6 4.7 730 create = 5 4.7 740 lvblnk = 7 4.7 750 type = 9 4.7 760 parms = 9 4.7 770 ptr2 = 11 4.7 780 stack = 13 4.7 790 link = 14 4.7 800 4.7 810 FOR opt=8 TO 10 STEP 2 4.7 820 P%=code% 4.7 830 L%=code%+codesize% 4.7 840 [OPT opt 4.7 850 .findvar 4.7 860 STMFD (stack)!,{parms ,link} 4.7 \ store registers 4.7 870 4.7 880 \ first try to find variable .. 4.7 890 LDR ptr2,[parms,#16] \ get ptr to string info block 4.7 900 LDR ptr2,[ptr2] \ get ptr to start of variable name 4.7 910 4.7 920 ADD lvblnk,link,#&3C \ get addr of BASIC lvblnk routine 4.7 930 4.7 940 MOV link,PC \ set return address 4.7 950 MOV PC,lvblnk \ call routine to find variable 4.7 960 BCS error \ exit if illegal name 4.7 970 BNE exit \ exit if variable found 4.7 980 4.7 990 \ otherwise need to create variable .. 4.7 1000 LDR link,[stack,#4] 4.7 \ retrieve link register 4.7 1010 ADD create,link,#&40 \ get addr of BASIC create routine 4.7 1020 MOV link,PC \ set return address 4.7 1030 MOV PC,create\ call routine to create variable 4.7 1040 ORR type,type,#&1<<9 4.7 \ indicate created 4.7 1050 4.7 1060 .exit 4.7 1070 LDMFD (stack)!,{ptr1 } \ get parm pointer 4.7 1080 LDR ptr2,[ptr1,#00] \ get addr of type% 4.7 1090 STR type,[ptr2] \ and store value 4.7 1100 LDR ptr2,[ptr1,#08] \ get addr of addr% 4.7 1110 STR addr,[ptr2] \ and store value 4.7 1120 LDMFD (stack)!,{pc } \ and return to BASIC 4.7 1130 4.7 1140 .error 4.7 1150 LDMFD (stack)!,{ptr1 } \ get parm pointer back 4.7 1160 LDR ptr2,[ptr1,#16] \ get ptr to string info block 4.7 1170 LDR ptr2,[ptr2] \ get ptr to start of variable name 4.7 1180 ADR R1,errv \ address output variable name 4.7 1190 .error1 4.7 1200 LDRB R0,[ptr2],#1 \ get char of variable name 4.7 1210 CMP R0,#&D \ at end yet? 4.7 1220 MOVEQ R0,#0 \ if at end, replace char with zero 4.7 1230 STRB R0,[R1],#1 \ store char of variable name 4.7 1240 BNE error1 \ if not end, go get next char 4.7 1250 ADR R0,errmsg \ address error message 4.7 1260 SWI “OS_GenerateError” 4.7 \ and generate error 4.7 1270 .errmsg 4.7 1280 EQUD 999 4.7 1290 EQUS “Invalid variable name ” 4.7 1300 .errv 4.7 1310 EQUS STRING$(30,“?”) 4.7 1320 EQUB 0 4.7 1330 ] 4.7 1340 NEXT 4.7 1350 ENDPROC A 4.7 4.7 ‘Tools’ − Graphics Library 4.7 Peter Clements 4.7 Having, myself, painted a mode 15 picture of some woodworking tools, I was very interested to see what ‘Micro Studio’ had come up with in their latest addition to their Graphics Library. Following in the footsteps of ‘World Wildlife’, ‘Prehistoric Animals’, ‘History’ and several other titles, comes ‘Tools’. The single disc is packaged in a sturdy plastic library case which I feel is somewhat larger than necessary. 4.7 Don’t be put off by the misspelt quotation on the cover by Benjamin Franklin which states that “Man is a TOOmaking animal”, the disc is absolutely crammed full of the most intricate !Drawfile clip art that I have ever seen. The quality of the drawing really has to be seen and my congratulations go to the artist who must have spent an eternity in compiling the set. 4.7 A total of nearly two hundred images are on the disc and range from hammers and brushes to simple nuts and bolts and power tools. Clicking on the Hammers file for example, reveals yet more varieties most of which I have heard of but couldn’t positively identify until now. 4.7 An index is provided in the form of an !Edit file. This not only lists the range of tools available but also gives a brief description of their usage and purpose. 4.7 A novel feature included in the package is one which lets the user choose from three different types of drawn hand. These are ‘clenched’, ‘fist’ and ‘hand’. If one of these images is loaded into !Draw, the fingers and thumb can be separated from the main outline. A tool can then be loaded, positioned against the outline of the hand and the fingers moved back into position. This all works rather well and is a useful addition to the package. If the scale looks a little wrong then either the hand or the tool can be enlarged, reduced or rotated to fit. 4.7 The images reproduced superbly on my nine pin dot matrix printer even when I attempted to scale them down to a really minute size. 4.7 I think this package will find itself being used mainly in schools and colleges and maybe some small businesses perhaps for letterhead design. Whatever the case, it’s a well thought out and expertly drawn library of clip art and is well worth the asking price. 4.7 Graphics Library Pack from Micro Studio, price £19.95 or £18 through Archive. A 4.7 4.7 Draw Format Clip Art 4.7 Charles Constantine 4.7 Clip art is a useful source of illustrations, especially for use with desk top publishing. There are several Public Domain sources (including Shareware/Careware), but many are in Sprite format. The big advantage of Draw format is that the images can be reproduced at the maximum resolution of the output device and they occupy much less file and memory space than equivalent sprites. 4.7 Draw Format Clip Art, Set one, from Midnight Graphics consists of five full discs of Draw images and a sixth disc containing an application !Viewer. The cost is £29.95 plus VAT. 4.7 !Viewer operates in a similar way to !Display on Shareware 26, but installs itself on the icon bar. Draw files can be rapidly viewed in a small window by dragging them from a directory viewer. Up to 255 images can be held in memory and instantly re-displayed by clicking in the !Viewer directory window. 4.7 The five clip art discs hold 466 Draw files in 21 directories. There is some repetition of similar subjects (e.g. Arrows and Phones) and two drawn fonts have a separate file for every character. However, the total collection is very comprehensive with directories covering Animals, Borders, Food, Maps, People and Shapes together with six ‘Miscellaneous’ directories. A 4.7 4.7 Graphics Libraries 4.7 Doug Weller 4.7 Now that DTP has become firmly established as a major use for the Archimedes, software houses are producing packs of sprites and !Draw files with particular themes. 4.7 MicroStudio 4.7 MicroStudio was a major producer of graphics for the BBC, so it is not surprising to find it in the forefront of graphics library suppliers for the Archimedes. Starting with some general graphics packs in both Draw and sprite format and some excellent !Draw maps, its catalogue now includes a wide variety of packages covering various themes in a mixture of Draw and sprite files. Its catalogue includes a decorated alphabet, tools, packs for illustrators and designers, a science pack, business, schools, children’s, nature, transport, media and photos (and probably more by the time you read this!) 4.7 Dinosaurs, costume and wildlife 4.7 I have looked at V.1 of their packages covering dinosaurs, wildlife and historic costume. These come on 1, 2 and 3 discs respectively, and except for the wildlife discs, the discs consist of a set of arced files plus !Sparkplug and instructions for de-archiving. Each disc includes an index which details the content of the discs plus a bit of information about the picture, e.g. in the case of the wildlife pack, the creature’s country of origin. 4.7 These packs are sprites only, although future versions will include more !Draw files, which I am told by another user who has seen an early version of a dinosaur, are excellent. They look very useful and generally well done, although one or two of the costume figures appeared to have small bits cut off. 4.7 I wasn’t sure how the selections were compiled and although I was impressed by the width in each category, I was also slightly disap pointed. This may be because I was looking at these too narrowly as a junior school teacher, looking for sprites covering areas I have been or may be teaching. Thus I was disappointed to find neither a badger nor a beaver in the wildlife library − if my class was looking at animal habitats, I would certainly want pictures of both of these. Similarly, I was surprised to find no Viking costumes, as this is a common subject in Junior schools (and is now required by the National Curriculum). I know their clothes weren’t that different from Anglo−Saxon and perhaps they were like the Teutonic costume on the disc − but I’m not an expert on costume and would like some clearly labelled Viking figures! (I know that the Vikings didn’t have wings on their helmets, so before I would use the Teutonic figures, who do have winged helmets, I’d have to do some research into their accuracy! 4.7 Covering the National Curriculum? 4.7 Having said this, the history disc with 58 files does cover middle- Eastern and European history fairly well; I look forward to a complemen tary package on historical costume from other arts of the world. (Following the National Curriculum, we’re doing Mayans next year, and maybe the Indus valley next, Micro-Studio!). Compilers of graphics libraries who want to sell to education would do well to look at the National Curriculum covering the relevant subject. 4.7 A tip for looking at sprites 4.7 If you want to look at a collection of sprites, don’t simply click on them! Although this often works, it doesn’t always show the entire sprite. I have only just discovered this − probably because, until recently, I never had any sprites that weren’t completely displayed by simply clicking on them. The easiest way to see them is probably not by using !Paint but by loading them into a DTP package, where you can easily resize them, etc. 4.7 Summary 4.7 With those caveats, these are excellent packages and Micro-Studio wouldn’t have to make many changes to cover the national curriculum (and of course they are looking toward a wider market anyway). At £19.95 (the introductory price for these packs) they are well worth the price. If they go up to the £29.95 of some of the other Micro−Studio packs, they are probably still decent value but may be getting more than most schools can afford. A 4.7 4.7 Draw Format Line Art Nº 1 4.7 John Jefferies 4.7 This is the first of a series of draw format lineart discs that Southern Printers are planning to produce. There is not as much draw format lineart available as there is sprite format artwork. This is probably because it takes rather longer to prepare and it isn’t as easy to transfer to Draw format from other computers’ formats, so it’s not so easy to tap into huge banks of artwork already prepared for the Ataris, Amigas and PC’s of this world. The advantages of using draw format instead of sprite should, presumably, be fairly obvious. Firstly, the size of the files is somewhat less and, secondly, the resolution and quality of the output is only limited by the printer not the pixel size of the sprite. Also, draw lineart can be scaled and rotated much more easily and effectively than sprite files and the “stepped edges” associated with scaled sprites can be largely avoided. 4.7 The lineart occupies all the capacity of the 800k disc apart from a couple of readme files, one explaining the copyright situation and the other giving an introduction to the contents and use of the disc. However, the files are not compacted. 4.7 The actual lineart is divided up into four directories: Animals, People, Transport and Others. 4.7 Animals 4.7 The animals are all fairly stylised and cartoon-like (e.g. the tortoise above). The contents list is: Bear, Bunny, Dog, Elephant, Fox, Frog, Goat, Panda, Piggy, PigSad, Pony, Seal, Tortoise and Toucan. 4.7 People 4.7 People provides Clown, Cowboy, Lady (Eastern), Pirate, Santa-1, Santa-2, Witch-1 and Witch-2. Again, these are fairly stylised and cartoon-like. 4.7 Transport 4.7 Transport consists of: Bike, Car, Lorry-1, Lorry-2, OldCar and Traction. These contain a lot more detail then some of the others − especially the motorbike shown below which is a 62K file. 4.7 Others 4.7 The final directory contains a number of smaller files and also the largest file of all. The file list is: Balloons, Clock (a very nice carriage clock), Flag-1, Flag-2, Holly (useful at Christmas), Look, Scroll-1, Scroll-2 and Tulips. This group contains the poorest examples (the scrolls) and the biggest file of all (108K) which consists of the word “Look” where the O’s are a pair of (female?) eyes drawn with incredible detail. 4.7 Conclusion 4.7 For £5.50, you can’t say that it’s not value for money − well, it is if you want lineart on any of the subjects mentioned. It looks to me as if it has been prepared by (at least) two people − one with good technical skill, as the motorbike and other transport shows, and one with a very characteristic drawing style which is common to the people and animals. Overall, a good disc − it will be interesting to see the sequel(s). A 4.7 4.7 Careware Nº 10 4.7 Ashley Bowden 4.7 The programs on this disc include three educational games and a number of other puzzles plus a bridge hand lister. The educational games are described first but note that they are ‘archived’ on the disc. This means that you have to use the !SparkPlug utility (supplied) to decompress them. Note also that they start off as 186K when archived and turn into about 925K after decompression, so more than one floppy disc is needed. 4.7 !Starmath 4.7 This game tests the user’s capabilities at mental arithmetic. An extra- terrestrial flavour is created by the use of spacecraft, missiles and a starry backdrop. You choose which of the mathematical operations ( +, -, x, / ) you want to use, a level of difficulty and a speed. The lower two levels are quite easy but the highest, level 3, is not. Well, not unless you are the sort of person who can divide 783 by 29 in your head in less than about two seconds. The graphics, sound and animation are very good if, perhaps, a trifle over elaborate. None of the educational games are RISC-OS multitasking applications but are Desktop compatible, in that they can be run from and that they return to the Desktop. 4.7 !Magic 4.7 This is a word-game essentially the same as hangman. There are levels of difficulty which dictate how many wrong attempts you are allowed for each word and a scoring system which takes account of how quickly you guess the word. The graphics are quite nice and, all in all, this is a playable, if rather standard, game. 4.7 !Quizland 4.7 In !Quizland, you have to find your way out of a maze avoiding hazards and answering general knowledge questions to help you along. You can choose the theme of the questions: Science, Maths, English, History, Geography or a mixture. Getting a question correct has no beneficial effect as such, it just stops your ‘vital force’ decreasing. If this reaches zero before you get out of the maze then you lose. Serpents and a strange bubble appear from time to time with the object of making life difficult. However, it seems that if you get most of the questions correct, you will get out since the maze is not too large. The game is rather slow moving, because the author wishes to show off her/his programming talents which one must, in fairness, admit are considerable. 4.7 The Puzzles 4.7 There is a set of six logical puzzles all by the same author which are based on related ideas. All have pieces which are placed on some sort of board (in two or three dimensions) subject to various rules. For example, one puzzle is to place eight queens on a chessboard so that none is attacking another. Another involves arranging 27 coloured cubes in a 3 x 3 x 3 pattern so that each row and column contains exactly one of the three available colours. Three of the puzzles use square tiles divided into quarters by diagonal lines. The quarters are coloured and the pieces have to be placed on the board so that adjoining edges are the same colour (and match the edge of the board or fulfil some other condition.) The puzzles have a unified feel to them and each uses the mouse and pointer in a similar way. What is more, each game has a second version where the computer solves the problem. This seems to involve an exhaustive search of the possible positions and can take several minutes but it is a useful addition. If you like this sort of puzzle then the collection is recommended. 4.7 !Rubik 4.7 This is a computer representation of a Rubik cube. It can be scrambled and unscrambled by the computer or you can do it yourself. Little more can be asked of such a program. 4.7 !Bridget 4.7 This program lists bridge hands. These are stored in an !Edit file. There are no colours or graphics just numbers and letters such as 7S. The hands may be particularly interesting or illustrative but I have only a slight knowledge of the game and am not in a position to judge. 4.7 !Solitaire 4.7 This is the only multi-tasking application on the disc. There are in fact two versions of the game available. Traditional solitaire involves beads jumping over others (draught style) until only one remains. ‘Colotaire’ involves beads of six different colours which have to be removed in a predetermined order. Both versions have a playback option so you can see where things went wrong. They also have some rather insane variants. There is ‘blind’ where all the pieces are invisible, ‘ghost’ where pieces which have moved but are still in the game become invisible and the aptly named ‘daft’ where pieces which have been removed are still visible when they should not be! All is, of course, controlled by mouse and menus in the proper way and it is great fun. A 4.7 4.7 Simple Measurement and Control 4.7 Jim Markland 4.7 Some months ago I wanted to write software to enable real time trans position for a MIDI music keyboard and my experiences of that and other interfacing projects may, hopefully, be of help to others wanting to do some simple control and measurement on the Archimedes. 4.7 When I started my MIDI project, I decided to acquire an Acorn I/O card for our A310 with MIDI upgrades rather than a pure MIDI card. This was in order to leave open the possibility of future simple control applications. 4.7 Was this a wise decision? 4.7 There were deep feelings of shock horror when the I/O card and documen tation arrived. The manual is very perfunctory and the 1MHz Bus application note is several orders of magnitude worse. The manual appears to assume that the reader has served an electronic apprentice ship, having first been weaned on a BBC Micro. This is not me. To begin to remedy this, I have had to go back to the BBC Micro User Guide and the Advanced User Guide which, luckily, I have been able to locate in our library. This really should not have been necessary. 4.7 Further pangs of anxiety were experienced when I observed the public health warning which goes with the MIDI upgrade for the card. Under certain conditions it does not, reputedly, behave as well as the regular MIDI only podule; nor does it have a Thru Port. To discover these I had to make the investment! I also learned that the I/O card exhibits some minor differences from the original BBC Micro specification. For tunately, it now appears that the lack of a built in Thru Port can be corrected through the use of a peripheral device. 4.7 The MIDI documentation which goes with the latest version of the MIDI firmware is not too bad and is a definite improvement on the original. Yamaha have very kindly provided MIDI voice charts, including for percussion, and I now have reasonably stable software which appears to achieve the original aim satisfactorily. I would also note that the potential MIDI problems of which I was forewarned by the manual have not surfaced. The imminent upgrade of Rhapsody is now awaited to fix various situations, at least one of which Clares denied ever existed! These include a MIDI voice selection capability and better captured data handling. 4.7 The reading of Michael Booms ‘Music through MIDI’ book is also in hand. This Microsoft Press book is a good read, especially if you are starting from a low knowledge base, but long-winded like many American texts and a bit light in some technical areas. It is also a relatively expensive import so borrow it, if you can. Incidentally, it would appear that MIDI could be used for general comms purposes, although this would smack of ‘wheel re-invention’. 4.7 Now to control 4.7 My control project is still not off the ground − this is, very largely, due to the difficulties I have had in establishing what one can actually do with an I/O card. In this Acorn could have been more sympathetic. “Ask you local dealer” is the standard response but the dealers to whom I have spoken have not been very knowledgeable. My research may therefore be of use to others who are attempting to tread this path. (To be fair to Acorn some of this information is buried somewhere inside their recently published Education Directory). 4.7 I am told by Acorn that the I/O card exists only for backward compat ibility. Such is the inertia in our education system, however, that peripherals which require the User Port − the Concept Keyboard for example − are likely to be around for a long time. As a consequence, and bearing in mind that the latest widget isn’t always necessary for a particular job, I feel that the educationalist/dabbler need not feel too bad about old technology. In fact, I was recently amazed to see several BBC micros still in use for experimental work at the research establish ment of a major, and very high tech, international company, where the Archimedes were being phased out and replaced by Sun workstations! 4.7 What I/O can be done? 4.7 Given the 1MHz Bus, the User Port and the A/D Port (these are on the Archimedes I/O card and an A3000 expansion with rather more functional ity is now available from Unilab), what can be done? One route is to get hold of Joe Telford’s introductory book ‘Control on the Archimedes’ from HCCS. This is not ideal but does describe a number of DIY interfaces for those interested in electronics. (In the same vein, Atomwide do a DIY internal expansion card.) Buffered interface boxes will needed to protect your Archimedes and you may prefer to send for brochures to help decide on the purchase of a ready built one. 4.7 The A/D Port is for input only and is designed to match the facilities of a typical joystick but, clearly, with the capability to handle other similar mixed analog and switched input. Several suppliers offer A/D breakout boxes. Of these, Deltronics appear to have the most comprehen sive one in that, I understand, theirs gives access to the ‘joystick buttons’ in addition to the analogue data. Other, and possibly better, methods of dealing with joysticks are now available for the Archimedes, yet the A/D Port still has its uses. 4.7 The User Port is ‘two way’ and some interfaces seem to require to use the Parallel Port, which is out only, in conjunction with it. Some interfaces specifically target either Lego or Fischer-Technik models whilst others are aimed at more general applicability. The facilities offered do vary quite a lot although they are all fairly basic and don’t tend to offer much, if anything, in the way of upgrade options. 4.7 In principle, the 1MHz Bus options should have the most to offer. The peripherals I have come across which use this are from DCP Microdevelop ments, Unilab and Paul Fray. The DCP units offer a modular approach to control and can, for example, permit stepper motor operation. The modules are daisy chained on an internal bus, incremental costs are not outrageous and the flexibility offered is attractive. The Unilab interface offers a wider range of features than those available on the User Port although it doesn’t appear to cater for expansion. Paul Fray supply a range of 1MHz cards for use in their own rack system. They also offer the Arachnid real time control software extensions. 4.7 One complication is that control and data logging applications can be accomplished in other ways. Serial Port, Parallel (printer) Port and now I2C (IsquaredC) options are either available or about to become so. One option will enable servos to be driven directly from the computer; another is a controller in its own right. Maybe we will also see more use being made of MIDI outside of entertainment? Of these, the I2C route is one to watch with particular interest. Ian Copestake has announced the imminent release of a series of peripherals which will access the Archimedes’ internal I2C serial bus. This has the particular attraction of requiring a very low cost hardware port on the computer. Morley Electronics already offer this on their User/MIDI card for the A3000 and I understand it is to become a standard on the IDE cards. Lesser mortals will have to be content with the loss of a podule slot. A consolation for those of us who have already installed the double width I/O card on a 4-slot backplane is that the tiny I2C outlet is expected to fit into that otherwise inaccessible and unused adjacent podule slot. I2C will offer very considerable expandability and has the potential for lots of functionality, once again at a reasonable cost. 4.7 If your use is serious/professional, consider the 1MHz Bus options but also talk to talk to Intelligent Interfaces and Wild Vision. They both supply a range of internal expansion cards offering specialised functions. Others provide specialist expansion cards for sound and video applications. 4.7 To sum up: 4.7 • There are a fair number of control peripherals available already both for professional and home/education use, although the professional range is nowhere as extensive as it is for a PC. Prices and facilities vary greatly. (Some peripherals may be used with other computers possibly with a little modification.) 4.7 • Serious users should consider the 1MHz Bus options but they may need different internal expansion cards altogether depending on the appli cation. They may have to pay a higher total price in consequence. 4.7 • Watch I2C developments carefully. In the meantime, if you can’t wait, look at DCP for expandability. Paul Fray’s racking system and ‘Arachnid’ Software looks interesting. 4.7 • For simple applications with limited expansion ambitions, look at the A/D break out boxes and User Port interfaces. The 1MHz Bus will still be there for future use. 4.7 • Go for the sole purpose MIDI card unless you are convinced you want the I/O card capability. 4.7 • If possible, don’t buy until you know what you really want. e.g. What sampling rate and accuracy do you need for Analog to Digital conversion? Do you need real time processing? 4.7 Unfortunately, the overall situation is pretty incoherent. Some of the software has not yet been released for Archimedes use and some may be rather primitive. Do check first. Check hardware compatibility too. Buyer beware! 4.7 To my mind, the jury is still out on my self posed question. I am, however, not unhappy (yet!) with the MIDI interface and do feel more comfortable having discovered the 1MHz Bus interfaces. 4.7 Apologies in advance to those manufacturers/vendors who have been left out or who may feel that I have misrepresented their product in any way. They should be assured that this is unintentional and merely a symptom of the state of play! 4.7 I would welcome any further contributions and/or errata on this subject. 4.7 Contacts (and fallible guide) 4.7 A3000 Podules/Expansion Box 4.7 H.C.C.S. (also the book) 091 487 0760 4.7 Morley Electronics Ltd 091 257 6355 4.7 Unilab 0254 681222 4.7 Concept Keyboard 4.7 Concept Keyboard Co Ltd 0962 843322 4.7 Joysticks/Joystick Interfaces 4.7 Voltmace (mouse replacement) 0462 894410 4.7 The Serial Port (parallel port) 0749 72234 4.7 RTFM Software (econet substitute) 0534 67870 4.7 Technomatic (int. expansion card) 081 205 0190 4.7 Data Loggers (serial port) 4.7 Phillip Harris Education 0543 480077 4.7 Resource 0302 340331 4.7 Sensors 4.7 GA Herdman 0777 700918 4.7 plus many others 4.7 I2C ‘Oddules’ (yet to be released) 4.7 Ian Copestake Software 051 648 6287 4.7 Servo control from Parallel port 4.7 Jansens 0733 244702 4.7 Trekker Vehicle 4.7 Clwyd Technics Ltd 035283 751 4.7 Scorpion Serial Port Controller 4.7 Commotion 081 804 1378 4.7 Professional/Serious Expansion cards 4.7 Intelligent Interfaces Ltd 0789 450925 4.7 Wild Vision 091 519 1455 4.7 1MHz Bus Interfaces 4.7 Arcom (Farnell) (STE Bus system) 0532 636311 4.7 DCP Microdevelopments Ltd 0480 830997 4.7 Paul Fray Ltd (Farnell) 0223 66529 4.7 Unilab 0254 681222 4.7 User Port/Parallel Port Interfaces 4.7 Deltronics 0269 843728 4.7 Phobox Electronics 0305 853767 4.7 Economatics (Education) Ltd 0742 561122 4.7 Lego UK Ltd 0978 290900 4.7 plus Unilab, Commotion and Paul Fray 4.7 A/D Breakout boxes/external cards 4.7 Phobox, Deltronics, Commotion, Economatics, Unilab 4.7 Parallel Port output module 4.7 Economatics 4.7 MIDI Thru expansion box 4.7 Electro Music Research Ltd 0702 335747 4.7 A 4.7 4.7 DataKing & DataTrans 4.7 Dave Morrell 4.7 “DataKing is an integrated database package designed for ease of use as a cross-curricular IT tool for Primary and Secondary phases.” says the advertising blurb. In fact, to allow for progression through the age range DataKing can be configured in three different ways, known as DataKing 1, 2 and 3. DataKing 1 is a simplified, cut down version designed for primary age or the raw beginner. DataKing 2 is the standard form and DataKing 3 is only needed if a datafile becomes too large for memory. The desired version of Dataking can be selected by pressing <space> at the first menu which cycles through the three options. 4.7 First impressions are deceptive 4.7 My first impressions of DataKing were acutely disappointing. DataKing is not multi-tasking and takes over the whole machine. The main menu screen is in Mode 7. It looked like another convert from the good old BBC B. Once I started using it, however, I began to change my mind. 4.7 The program is entirely menu driven and, given that it is designed for educational use at all ages, this is probably a good idea. On later reading of the manual, I discovered that DataKing has been produced for most of the computers found in education and this has, presumably, led to a consistent interface over all the machines. Not really the RISC-OS ethos, but understandable. 4.7 Getting started 4.7 There are six options on the main menu. Option B, Begin Here, is a useful option to start with. It gives a very simple overview of the program and is quite handy for those of us who cannot be bothered to read manuals. It gives a suggested order for tackling the four main parts of the package and moves on to give a simple example showing what fields and records are. 4.7 In their suggested order for learning the program, Option A is the first option. This allows the user to begin a new datafile. To begin with, you only need to input a file name and the number of records. You then follow the simple on-screen instructions to produce your first blank datafile. One point I liked about this program is that field length does not need to be specified and could be up to 250 characters long. This means that children with relatively little experience in data handling do not have to think too long and hard about the length of every piece of data to be input. Each record can have up to 26 fields but, if necessary, the program could push this up to 31. Before saving the file to disc, you are asked to check whether all is correct and, if so, the file is then saved and the first record appears on screen ready for the input of data. As each record is finished, you are again asked to check if all is correct before it is saved. If it is not quite as you want it, the program allows you to edit the data one field at a time. 4.7 Once the simple basics of database handling are acquired, i.e. that each record is composed of several fields, the input of data is extremely easy with checks all the way. 4.7 Graphs & charts 4.7 After the data is in the file, what can be done with it? Most primary schools like to display this sort of work as graphs or charts. DataKing is well endowed with graphical options. Option C on the main menu selects the charts section of DataKing. The menu that appears is a graphical one. The various graphics options are shown in small icons with a letter above. Pressing a letter leads to a question and answer session concerning which fields are to be used etc. Once this has been sorted out to the user’s satisfaction, the charts are produced very quickly. Various bar charts, line graphs, pie charts and a scatter graph are available from this menu as well as options to return to the main menu, change the file being used or to enter the data workshop. 4.7 Charts and graphs can be printed directly from the program. As it comes, the program only supports monochrome printers with Epson graphics compatibility but instructions are given for producing colour dumps if a screen dump program is available. Presumably, the same technique could be used for printout on an inkjet, laser on non-Epson printer. For use in a DTP package, a screensave option is available. This was incorrectly described in the manual. A screensave is effected by pressing <S> not <ctrl-P>. 4.7 Manipulating the data 4.7 Option D on the main menu is the heart of DataKing. This is the Data Workshop, as they call it. This option presents the user with a menu list of datafiles held on the disc. Pressing the relevant letter for the datafile loads the data into memory to be worked on. At the same time, the user is presented with another menu detailing the workshop options. These are quite extensive; i.e. Print records, Browse through records, Calculator, Choose a different file, Return to main menu, Group data, Total fields and produce mean values, Sort, Search, Join files, Correlate fields and produce labels. 4.7 Option H is a sort option. One aspect of this I liked was the facility to save a sorted file under a different name leaving the original data untouched. This leaves two datafiles on the disc containing the data in different orders. The sort function seems to be very fast. One file I worked with was the “Placenames” datafile converted over from “Key”. This contains 711 records of 10 fields. They did not seem to be in any logical order when I converted them over and they were sorted in alphabetical order of names in less than 1½ minutes including writing the file to disc. The sort is done automatically in the two simpler configurations of DataKing. If the total of the entries in the selected field is zero the sort is done alphabetically. If the total is greater than zero it is done numerically. This could lead to problems with names such as 4Mation. To avoid this problem, it should be entered as !4Mation. 4.7 Option I is a search procedure. Like the rest of DataKing, all the information is placed on the screen and options chosen by selected keypresses. Again it is fast. 4.7 Printing records 4.7 In order to print out records (Option A), a print format screen has to be gone through. The default options on this are sensibly set for newcomers. The format screen allows the user to set up line or column output, the number of fields output, the column width, the type of paper in the printer and the size of print. This uses the default printer options, so seems to be printer independent. If anything fancier is needed, the search procedure can be utilised to extract the relevant records and fields. These can then be converted, very quickly, to CSV or TSV format ready for importing into a word processor or DTP package. 4.7 Summaries 4.7 Option C is a calculator. This allows one field to be defined as a function of another in a similar way to that of a spreadsheet. Each field in DataKing can be identified by a letter alongside it. The calculator uses these identity letters expressed in a formula. If, for instance, a teacher was to produce a datafile of marks for each child in a class, the total can be worked out automatically by DataKing using a simple formula such as Total (field E) = (fields) B+C+D, field A being the name of the child. This is a very simple example but serves to illustrate what can be done. Quite complicated formulae can be input and worked automatically. Various other examples are given in the manual. 4.7 Option F will allow the user to calculate the total and the arithmetic mean of each field. Results can be output to screen or printer. The example which the manual gives for this is keeping a record of scores during a school sports day. This could give virtually instant readout of individual or team marks. 4.7 Option G allows the user to create frequency distributions of the data in any field. It sounds very statistical but left me puzzled. The manual does not give much explanation and no example for this option. I tried working through a few datafiles but still could not work out what I was getting. I could easily have chosen the wrong fields or the wrong files for this but I think more explanation is needed in the manual. 4.7 Option K will correlate two numeric fields to give a Spearman’s Coefficient of Rank Correlation between them. Obvious examples for this using the data files provided are the correlation between size and wing span of insects and height, weight and shoe size of children. 4.7 Other features 4.7 Option B is for browsing through the datafile one record at a time using the cursor keys. 4.7 Option E returns the user to the main menu. 4.7 Option L, the final one in the workshop, is a label printing facility. Again, a question and answer session is provided to set this up. It seems to provide for a very flexible label layout. 4.7 Manipulating the files 4.7 Option D allows the user to choose another datafile from the set on the disc. 4.7 Option J allows the user to join files. This can be done in two ways. Two separate datafiles using the same format can be joined to give one file containing more records. Alternatively two files of different formats and fields can be combined to give one file of more fields. With this method, the fields in the second file are added to the end of the fields in the corresponding position in the first file and a new file is saved. Any two files can be combined regardless of whether or not the final result is sensible. 4.7 Editing the data 4.7 The last but one option on the main menu allows the user to extend or edit any of the available data files. DataKing 1 has three options: Adding records, Adding fields & Simple Editor. 4.7 Adding records obviously allows more records to be added to the file. For speed, the existing records are not read into memory so this option does not allow editing of any records. Adding fields will allow the user to add one or more fields to each record in an existing datafile. The program first asks for the name of the new field(s) and then goes through the file, record by record, so that the new field can be added to each one. The file can be saved after each addition or left until the end when all have been done. Any new fields that are not completed during the one session can be entered using the Editor at a later date. 4.7 The simple editor reads the required file into memory and puts the first record on screen. The user can then single step through the records in the file. This is a rather slow method of working. If the number of the record to be changed is known pressing <F2> and entering the number will bring up the selected record. No new fields can be added using the simple editor. Screen display is the same as when starting a new file. 4.7 DataKing 2 adds a fourth option, an advanced editor, to this menu. I found this editor extremely useful and flexible. The data is loaded into memory as for the simple editor but this time it is displayed in a spreadsheet format similar to PipeDream. Twenty records are displayed on screen at a time. The cursor and function keys are used for editing. A function key strip is provided. 4.7 Records can be added to or deleted from the file. When adding records data common to many records can be added automatically, as when replicating in a spreadsheet. Data slots can be copied. Fieldnames can be accessed and changed. When entering many records ‘auto-entry’ can be set up. This is not a mind reading facility unfortunately. It just moves the cursor to the next slot when <return> is pressed. ‘Auto-entry’ can be set to go down or to the right. The number of columns seen on screen, up to a maximum of nine, can be set by the user. Fields longer than the column width will be truncated to fit but the data will not be lost. To see the full field from a truncated entry, place the cursor on it and press <space>. The entry will appear in full at the top left of the screen. 4.7 The advanced editor also contains a search facility. This searches for specified words in specified fields. 4.7 One thing I did not like about the advanced editor was the use of <F9> rather than <F12> to access the operating system. I know that this allows a match with the Master and B series etc but <F12> does nothing. I would have preferred both keys to give access to the operating system thus giving compatibility between machines and, on the Archimedes, programs. 4.7 All changes done in the advanced editor are in memory not on disc so it is essential to save the data before exiting DataKing. DataKing is well error-trapped in this respect as the only way I could exit without saving was a hard reset or switch-off. 4.7 DataKing 3 adds a serial editor to the extend or edit options. DataKing 3 is only needed when the datafile is too big to fit into memory. This should not happen very often with an Archimedes. The serial editor is very similar to the advanced editor but works with two disc files rather than one memory file. Records are read in twenty at a time, one screenful, from the source file to be worked on. When the cursor leaves the last line of the screen they are saved to the destination file and the next twenty records are read in. 4.7 The final option on is a Quit option. 4.7 Conclusions 4.7 If you do not have a database in school this could be a good buy as it is flexible, fast and easy to use. If you already have a good database in regular use, it begins to lose some of its appeal. If you use more than one type of computer in school it could have its attractions in that a consistent user interface across the machines would be available. 4.7 For use in the home I think this program has a lot going for it. It has a much easier learning curve than something like System Delta or MultiStore. These are two that I have had access to but I cannot compare it with something like Beebug’s Masterfile or Clares’ Alphabase as I have never used them. Price wise, DataKing compares with Alphabase. 4.7 Although the program is not multi-tasking, it does not upset anything left in the desktop when it is entered and does not appear to make any changes to the machine’s configuration. This program can be recommended as a simple database which is fairly powerful and flexible. 4.7 DataTrans 4.7 DataTrans is a sister program to DataKing from Shenley Software. It is a fully RISC-OS compatible, multi-tasking application. Its purpose is to convert data between different database formats. When run, it sets itself up on the icon bar in the usual way. 4.7 To convert a datafile, drag the file icon to the DataTrans icon on the icon bar. A menu appears consisting of two columns of names of popular databases, mainly educational. The left hand column is titled “Read from” and the user must click on the button next to the database being converted. The right hand column is titled “Write to” and the user must click on the button showing the format they wish the data to be in. That is all there is to it. 4.7 It is fast and it works well. Most educational databases are listed as well as Mail merge(!), CSV and TSV (TAB) formats. 4.7 Several datafiles were provided, mainly from the educational sector. All these were converted for use in DataKing without problem. I also converted several to TAB format and imported them into MultiStore without much difficulty. 4.7 In my BBC Master days, I used ViewStore a lot and still have many of these files around. All these were converted without problem. 4.7 The only problem which I encountered, and expected, was in trying to convert some of the specialist datafiles for Key which ITV put out. Many of these contain pictures, in BBC format, and I was unable to convert any of these. Standard Key datafiles such as the Placenames file converted with no problem. 4.7 Conclusions 4.7 Have you a need to convert data from one format to another? If you have, this program could be very useful. I wish it had been available a few years ago on the BBC. At £18, it is not cheap for what it does but it does it easily, quickly and accurately. 4.7 I think it could find a place in many schools considering the plethora of databases, all with different formats that abound in the educational sector 4.7 DataTrans and DataKing are both available from Shenley Software at £18 and £48 respectively. A 4.7 4.7 Twin World 4.7 Stuart Turgis 4.7 Twin World is a wonderful new game from Cygnus software. Basically it is a sort of ‘levels’ game similar in style to games on the BBC/Master like Blagger, Manic Miner etc. 4.7 The differences are that, graphically speaking, Twin World is far, far better (as you might expect), not only in the design of the screens, but also in the animation. A vivid example of this is the response of the hero to your key presses; if you hold down a direction key, your hero will start walking briskly in that direction. However, if you suddenly change directions, he slides a bit, then starts walking in the direction you desire. It’s attention to detail like this which lifts this game above the usual genre of levels games. Also, the game area is not a single screen, so each level occupies about five or six screens, with smooth scrolling as you walk. There are some 23 levels in all, divided between five different scenarios. Each scenario is four levels and between each scenario is a special bonus level where you just get points. 4.7 Adversaries 4.7 What else makes it different? Well, firstly, there are lots of adver saries, mystical beasts of every shape and size, which you can shoot by using one of three types of spells. The spells differ in the number required to vanquish a beast. You can restock your spells by collecting certain objects as you go along but the more powerful spells are less abundant (especially on the lower levels). 4.7 Secondly, Twin World gets its name not from the different scenarios or the number of levels but from the fact that on each level there are two worlds, so you can avoid some beasts and obstacles by switching worlds. You do this by pressing <down> once you are in an appropriate doorway and you do a quick spin and.... you’re in the other world. 4.7 Object of the game 4.7 To proceed to the next level, you have to find a piece of the missing amulet, take it to the doorway which has an amulet sign on it, press <down> as though you’re trying to switch worlds and your hero waves at you to confirm the completion. So, if you want, you can avoid a lot of the obstacles and beasts and go straight for the amulet. Of course, it is often located in quite a distant place so, inevitably, there will be a number of obstacles to overcome. 4.7 Objects 4.7 Along the way you will find many objects. These automatically stock up your spells repository to a maximum of 99 per spell type but you will also find items which score points (a little bell rings and you will see a score floating off to the top of the screen), keys which are used to unlock many of the doorways, extra lives, skulls which remove lives, springs which give you extra height for jumps, parachutes which let you fall greater distances and a flute which allows you to summon a genie to buy extra objects (in exchange for points). 4.7 Touches of brilliance 4.7 Other nice touches in the game are mainly in the animation; for example, if you bang your head too many times, your hero stops, takes his hat off and scratches his head. The second world is underwater and your movement is very much restricted as it would be under water and, finally, when you eventually die, your hero gives a quick spin and falls to the ground. It’s just great! 4.7 Music 4.7 The music throughout the game is very good, from the initial loading tune to the different scenario tunes (yes, the music changes to fit the mood of the scenario) and the final ‘congratulations’ tune when you’ve completed all the levels. Unlike some games, the music can be toggled between high, medium, low and off, and this is separate from the sound (explosions etc). 4.7 Finale 4.7 For the very final level, you will need to make sure that you have plenty of spells, especially the more powerful ones, and plenty of lives. This is because you face the evil lord who throws all his minions at you in successive waves and, having defeated them, he himself mutates into a massive dragon which you have to try and destroy. 4.7 Running details 4.7 Twin World, which is from Cygnus Software (priced at £19.99 or £18 through Archive), is one of two new games ported across from the Amiga, (the second being Iron Lord). As you would expect, it runs happily in 1Mbyte of RAM but, unusually, it runs from, and returns correctly to, the desktop. It is unprotected, so it will run from floppy, hard or RAM disc. 4.7 Two applications are on the disc. The first is a help program which sets the scenario, explains the objects, keyboard etc and how to load/save games. The second runs the game. Having completed a level, when you are shown the picture of the amulet, if you press Save, your current position is saved but, be warned, it overwrites the last position. (The file is called SavedGame if you want to copy it for each level.) This position is restored when you choose the Continue Game option. 4.7 Conclusions 4.7 Brilliant, just brilliant! The only minor grumble is that it obvious that it was a port from the Amiga or ST, the screen is only being about half size (height wise). It’s not over-priced, it’s addictive, it gets progressively more difficult, the save position is essential and, graphically, it is excellent. 4.7 I’ve completed the game and have given Paul some hints, tips and a cheat for jumping levels. I expect this will be published in a few months time, when you’ve all had a go at playing it! A 4.7 4.7 More Notes on BBC Emulators 4.7 Brian Carroll 4.7 At the end of last year I parted company with my long-neglected BBC Model B. Murphy’s Law dictated that very soon afterwards I found the need to run BBC and Master software, from DFS discs, to help several newcomers to those machines! The result was that I had to take a serious interest in the Archimedes 6502 emulators and the various DFS emulations (see review, Archive 4.1 p 48) including recently the new disc from Acorn, and I have spent a lot of time getting as close as possible to a disc based BBC Micro. 4.7 These notes supplement the valuable contributions by Brian Cowan and David Bower (Archive 4.5 pp 37-39) and acknowledge the documentation in the latest Acorn package. I hope that what follows will help readers who have not yet got a copy of this package. 4.7 A brief history 4.7 The two RISC-OS 6502 emulators, 65Tube and 65Host, have a rather complicated history. There have been two versions of the former and three of the latter. Table 1 (overleaf) shows these releases and the actual versions, sizes and dates of the component parts of the packages. Release 1.6 is the only one to have adequate documentation and includes some conversion utilities. 4.7 65Tube 4.7 The 65Tube emulator should be regarded as a BBC 6502 Second Processor which uses Archimedes and RISC-OS for input and output instead of a BBC or Master Computer. It contains a copy of HIBASIC ver. 4.3 which is immediately entered when the emulator starts. Note that the start-up screen message gives the Tube OS version, not the emulator version. All RISC-OS filing systems, *commands and system facilities are accessible; including all screen modes, not just the BBC ones. There are only two internal *-commands: *EMULATETUBE to start it and *QUIT to leave. The Release 1.6 application, !65Tube, has a new icon and a useful !Run file. The system variable 65Tube$Mode in the latter can be edited (in two places) to start the emulator in any chosen screen mode. Though not essential, I recommend starting the application from the Desktop. 4.7 PAGE in the emulator is set at &800 as expected and 44K is available to the user. Anyone with ‘High’ versions of BBC software would be well advised to use this emulator; subjectively, it runs as fast as an ordinary BBC 2nd processor (except in screen mode 7) and is very straightforward to use with both ADFS and (if available) DFS. Hi- Wordwise Plus works admirably, and the Hi-View packages should do as well. Programs that attempt to access a BBC input/output processor’s facilities, e.g. sound, are unlikely to work fully. To prevent external memory access, 65Tube treats addresses &FFFFxxxx as within its own address space rather than in the I/O processor’s. 4.7 65Host 4.7 This application substantially emulates a BBC micro with OS 1.2 and BASIC 2. It can be set up with all or some of the 16 potential sideways slots as either ROM or RAM. It cannot access RISC-OS facilities or screen modes directly, as 65Tube can, except for specific but restricted access to filing systems. It is particularly important to note, as Table 1 shows, that the application !65Host comprises four parts and that these will be set up correctly only if the !Run file is used. The application is therefore best started from the desktop: it is definitely not sufficient to *RMRun the BBC 6502Emulator module! What follows is mainly about Releases 1.4 and 1.6. 4.7 It should also be noted that the various *-commands mentioned in the User Guide pp 153-155 are available only from RISC-OS, not from within the emulator: they are used, for example, in the !Run file. These commands include *DIPSTATE, previously undocumented, which replaces *FX 255 ,n to allow selection of the startup screen mode. 4.7 Inside the emulator, several specific *-commands are however provided and all the BBC filing systems can be called: *ADFS, *NET, *DISC/DISK, *ROM, *TAPE and a new one, *ARFS. ARFS acts as a gateway to whichever RISC-OS filing system is current on entry to the emulator, e.g. ADFS, NET, or DFS. *ROM and *TAPE do nothing useful; *ADFS, *NET select these systems via RISC-OS; and in Releases 1.4 & 1.6 *DISC selects a rough emulation of the BBC DFS that is coded in the ARFS and UTIL ROMs. 4.7 When one is using one of the RISC-OS filing systems via ARFS, only the commands recognised by both ARFS and the external system are imple mented. These include all the more common ones but sometimes the screen output is less complete or in a different form. Release 1.6 has considerable improvements in this area. 4.7 If a RISC-OS DFS is available, e.g. ArcDFS, it may be accessed via ARFS by using syntax such as *DIR DFS::0 for DFS drive 0. *DRIVE is unrecogn ised and will not be passed on by ARFS and *DISC will select the emulated internal DFS. Even better is to load and set DFS as the current RISC-OS filing system before entry and then to set ARFS as the entry BBC filing system (see below). Release 1.4 already sets the latter but Release 1.6 sets ADFS. It is worth remembering to set *ADFS before leaving the emulator with *QUIT. 4.7 <Reset> resets RISC-OS as usual, but <break. and its variants operate more or less as on the BBC, except that <shift-break> does not look for a !BOOT file. However, when the emulator initialises or when the new command, *RESET 1 which emulates a power-on 6502 reset, is invoked, the emulator looks for a file and option (*OPT 4,n) that have been set in system variables 65Host$BootFile and 65Host$BootOptions, so this useful BBC feature can be approximated. The BootOptions value also specifies the emulator’s default filing system, from which the BootFile is to be fetched (see Table 2). The option and filename may also be passed as parameters when the emulator is started from the command line. 4.7 The ‘internal’ DFS invoked by *DISC uses the current RISC-OS system, normally ADFS, with rather elaborate and inconvenient translations of filenames. It requires, say, an ADFS disc to be set up with four directories in the root named 1, 2, 3 and 4 which are ‘looked at’ by DFS as four BBC drives. There seems to me to be little point in using this system when ADFS can more conveniently be used directly: it definitely did not meet my need to be able to use standard BBC DFS floppies in my external 5.25“ drive! 4.7 Though the latest Release 1.6 has improved the internal DFS emulation in many details, the fundamental difficulties with it remain. This Release has lowered default PAGE to the normal BBC ‘B’ value of &1900 and it may be further lowered with care to &1100 to release more memory. Some other detailed improvements have also been made, and it runs generally faster than the earlier Releases. 4.7 As mentioned above, all 16 sideways slots at &8000 are potentially available. BASIC is always seen in slot 12; ARFS and UTILSROM are cached in slots 11 & 10 by the !Run file. Other BBC ROM images can be cached in any of the remaining slots, including 13-15 if a startup language other than BASIC is preferred. I have tried numerous BBC ROM images which seem satisfactory unless they try to use non-existent or different hardware. View, Beebug’s Toolkit+ and BeebHelp, and Wordwise Plus all work properly but fairly slowly. Other slots may be prepared for sideways RAM (the !Run file needs to be edited as required). ROM images may then be *SRLOADed within the emulator using the BBC Master SRAM commands and syntax. Each slot that is set up as ROM or RAM besides slot 12 needs 16K in the RMA: 240K for them all. 4.7 ArcDFS 4.7 This package has been adequately reviewed elsewhere so I will limit my remarks. I think the package is really excellent value; it provides all the facilities of the three common BBC disc systems, and much more, and the manual is a model of clarity. In the desktop, a new drive icon is provided for each floppy drive surface. Eight surfaces can be handled, so if a DFS ramdisc is set up (using *RAMDISC <drive>) it need not be an existing drive as the manual implies. Windows behave exactly as for ADFS, so file transfer and manipulation are extremely easy. The root DFS directory is always displayed and files in other directories are shown with their directory letter, so transfer to ADFS may need some re- naming. 4.7 One note of caution: the icons and other file data displayed with ‘full info’ are meaningless and untidy. However, do not be tempted to *STAMP or *SETTYPE DFS files because you will then change the addresses in the disc directory that DFS and the emulator will require for correct *LOADing. This does not matter for BASIC files, so it is possible to define a filetype for these and then provide an icon and RunAlias. 4.7 All the many DFS commands are available from the *-prompt. *EX and *INFO show heading, addresses and the L attribute in correct DFS format. The !RunImage application is not required for such use, only the modules DFS and ABClibrary. One particularly useful new *-command is *ASSIGN which permits reallocation of logical drive number to physical drive surface. I use this to make my external 5¼“ drive 2 appear from 65Tube and 65Host to be DFS drives :0 and :2 instead of :4 and :6. Another useful one is *DETAILS which reveals a disc’s size and format. 4.7 Using various features of 65Host and ArcDFS, I have edited my !Run file (available on the monthly disc) to start an application !BBC+DFS which provides a DFS-based BBC ‘B’ with ROM/RAM expansion card. Clicking on the icon, loads both emulator and DFS and looks for an EXEC !BOOT file on the 5¼“ DFS drive :0. I have tried many of my old BBC discs and most behave just as before. 4.7 Extras 4.7 As well as the new emulators, Release 1.6 includes some utilities to help with the conversion of BBC Model B BASIC programs to run in native Archimedes mode under RISC-OS. I have not used these yet. There is much advice in the manual on this topic besides detail of all versions of both 6502 emulators. There is also a comprehensive list of 3rd party software, hardware and services aimed at the general objective of using existing BBC software one way or another on the Archimedes. 4.7 Documentation 4.7 The voluminous documentation is provided only as files on the disc in both raw text and Acorn DTP forms, and three raw text ReadMe files. The total material is nearly seventy A4 pages but there is a great deal of repetition and, as the files are all dated Aug or Sep 90, the new bits in the ReadMe files should have been included in the main text. 4.7 There are still some obscurities and ambiguities. Much of the material applies to all the Releases and should have been in the User Guide. I do not have Acorn DTP so I have no page numbering or index. One day I shall edit the lot and would expect the volume to be halved. I do not like having a manual provided only in disc files and hope this is not an Acorn trend. 4.7 Conclusion 4.7 Both emulations are now very satisfactory and should allow a great deal of BBC software to be used as it is. Emulation of the BBC DFS in 65Host is not good, even in the latest Release, and of course there is no DFS emulation with 65Tube. Both, however, work harmoniously with ArcDFS after a bit of ‘tweaking’. Naturally, full DFS compatibility requires an external 5¼“ disc drive. 4.7 Everyone should certainly be using Release 1.4 (Shareware 17). The further improvements in the actual emulations of Release 1.6 are modest but it is the first to provide adequate documentation which allows the software to be properly exploited and some conversion utilities. 4.7 Whether Release 1.6 is good value is a moot point. Personally I think almost £20.00 is far too much for only modest performance improvements and a machine readable and poorly edited section omitted from the User Guide; it would be less unreasonable if a printed manual were included. Nevertheless, I certainly could not have arranged so effective an emulation without the manual and for those who have substantial BBC software they want to continue to use with the Archimedes, the new Release is essential. A 4.7 4.7 Table 1: BBC 6502 Emulators − Summary of development 4.7 Source Release 65Tube 65Host BBCsound ARFS UTILS 4.7 number 4.7 version version version version version 4.7 size size size size size 4.7 date date date date date 4.7 4.7 (module) (module) (module) (ROM) (ROM) 4.7 —————————————————————————————— 4.7 Acorn Initial 0.96 0.97 No 0.13 0.01 4.7 Apps 2 RISC-OS 29K 55K 3K 16K 4.7 disc release Nov 88 Dec88 Dec 88 Nov 88 4.7 —————————————————————————————— 4.7 Acorn 1.4 No 1.14 0.07 1.09 ditto 4.7 RISC-OS 63K 1K 6K 4.7 Extras disc Sep 89 Feb 89 Aug 89 4.7 = Shareware 17 4.7 —————————————————————————————— 4.7 Acorn 1.6 1.17 1.19 ditto 1.24 ditto 4.7 BBC Model 31K 63K 7K 4.7 B Emulator disc Apr 90 Jul 90 Jul 90 4.7 —————————————————————————————— 4.7 4.7 Table 2: 65Host Boot Options 4.7 The system variable 65Host$BootOptions is set to a 32-bit hex number which is read as a string; i.e. &00000<n>0<m>. The leading zeros may be omitted. 4.7 Value of <n> Filing System 4.7 (bits 8 - 15) 4.7 0 Default (Release 1.4, ARFS; 1.6, ADFS) 4.7 1 TAPE 4.7 2 TAPE3 4.7 3 ROM 4.7 4 DISC (i.e. the internal DFS emulation) 4.7 5 NET 4.7 6 − 4.7 7 − 4.7 8 ADFS 4.7 9 − 4.7 A − 4.7 B ARFS (i.e. the current RISC-OS system) 4.7 C-FF − 4.7 4.7 Value of <m> Boot Action 4.7 (bits 0 - 1) 4.7 0 No action 4.7 1 *LOAD 4.7 2 *RUN 4.7 3 *EXEC 4.7 4.7 Archimedes Quest 4.7 Joe Gallagher 4.7 The educational database Quest was one of the first available for the BBC Micro but has gained the reputation of being something of a dinosaur in these days of drop down/ pop up, all-singing, all-dancing windowed systems. Its origins predate the era of bit mapped graphics, let alone the widespread use of graphic user interfaces. Quest’s roots were very much in the dBase mould of command driven databases and it has retained this flavour in all of its incarnations. The latest offering, Archimedes Quest from the Advisory Unit at Hatfield, proves to be no exception to this rule. 4.7 The program comes on a single disc accompanied by a slim guide similar to those which have accompanied previous releases. On booting up, you are presented with the “Values” screen which acts as the command centre for Quest’s operations. This is the same Mode 7 screen as is found on earlier releases − it is unfortunate that the authors chose to use the Archimedes’ rather feeble emulation of a teletext screen. Clearly they have been concerned with retaining the look and feel of Quest on the Beeb. This screen, despite looking rather plain by today’s standards, is highly informative, as previous users of the program will recall. Apart from the usual status information, it shows the file’s fields, the last typed query, which fields will be displayed by the PRINT command and in what screen format they will be shown. 4.7 Quest is not a RISC-OS application. It can be run from the desktop as an ordinary single tasking program and under the latest version has its own icon which can be installed on the icon bar. However, it makes use of neither the window manager nor the system’s concept of filetypes. 4.7 The former is perhaps inevitable in the light of the decision to retain the traditional command driven approach. This omission seems heretical given the growing proportion of Archimedes applications which is multi- tasking. Indeed, apart from its speed and graphic capabilities, it is the powerful and easy to use windowing system of the Archimedes which enables it to retain the edge over rivals of comparable price. Acorn would dearly like to expand its existing user base but schools and colleges still represent an important market. The RISC-OS desktop would seem to be tailor made for this educational environment. The Archimedes’ consistent, easy to use and intuitive menuing system allows operating knowledge gained using one application to be readily employed when learning a new one. Both student and teachers can get on with some useful work quickly and without having to become expert in dozens of arcane commands. With respect to information handling, multitasking offers the student the opportunity to construct several views of their findings and export these results, whether they be text or graphics, to another application for further processing. 4.7 Retaining the old Quest interface appears to be a deliberate decision based on the premise that, the user should be able to switch rapidly from one facility of the program to another without having to go through a labyrinth of menus and submenus. To help you along the way, the function keys are defined with many of the most used keywords and there is an extensive help facility accessed by typing HELP. 4.7 However, the fact remains that the user needs to know a minimum number of commands to get going. I read recently that, amongst other things, an ideal educational database should never take more than half an hour to get to grips with. While sympathising with the sentiment, I feel that even the most sophisticated user interface does not remove the need for the learner to come to terms with the conceptual hurdles involved. You can quickly learn how to knock out a few interesting shapes with !Draw but it will take you slightly longer if you really want to use it in anger. The truth is that, for all but the most trivial of tasks or those such as word-processing, which are really aids to an existing skill, there is a learning curve to be climbed. This is especially true of information retrieval. The question is, does Quest make it steeper than it need be? 4.7 In Quest it is possible to build quite complex conditional searches from simple ones (and those containing multiple test values) joined by logical operators. There is, however, no equivalent to the “history” command found in some database systems and no way of stringing together a sequence of queries with display or formatting commands. Everything takes place in the immediate mode with no possibility of editing other than using the copy key to copy a line of text entered previously and no way of saving a sequence of operations except by the rather artificial and awkward use of a command file executed from the “star” prompt which is accessible at all times. 4.7 While one can see a rationale for sticking with a command driven approach, the lack of any kind of macro facility is, I’m afraid, something which greatly diminishes the much vaunted power and flexibil ity of the system. Furthermore, the RISC-OS menuing facility is a huge improvement not only on the old style full screen menus found in packages such as Key on the BBC, but also surpasses those of the drop down variety found on the Mac and in the Microsoft Windows environment on the PC. 4.7 How then does Archimedes Quest shape up as an educational database for the 90‘s? This version, on the face of it, would seem to offer very little more than a bigger and faster edition of its 8 bit predecessor. However, it certainly is both of these things. Quest runs comfortably even on an unexpanded Archimedes 305 (are there any of these left?) and it easily out performs its equivalent running under MSDOS on a Nimbus, despite being coded entirely in BBC BASIC! 4.7 However, speed apart, there are a number of enhancements to this version which make it worthy of consideration. Quest’s infamous unfriendly command language has mellowed somewhat to include more natural language terms. For example, the program now allows you to substitute “has” for “sub” when searching for a text substring in a query and there are similar modifications for handling other relationships as well as housekeeping operations. 4.7 While Quest has always been highly rated for the flexibility of its interrogative facilities, the same could not be said to be true of its file handling. This area has been improved considerably. Quest is perhaps the grand-daddy of educational databases and this is reflected in the fact that many of its competitors have facilities to read and write Quest files. In addition to this, Quest32 is able to import and export files in both comma separated and tab separated format, as well as data files from earlier versions of Quest. Further flexibility has been added in that it is now possible to merge two data files and add or delete fields within the database. 4.7 Quest’s ability to communicate with other programs is now fairly respectable, although it still falls short of those provided by a true RISC-OS application. Nevertheless it is possible to export virtually all of the program’s output; textual, statistical or graphical (as Archi medes sprites) to external editors. You can create a data file for First Word Plus’ mail shot facility simply by saving a file or a selection from a file in comma separated format. 4.7 Graphs & charts 4.7 Undoubtedly, the ability to derive graphs and charts from data files helps the novice user in interpreting their data. Quest has a fairly comprehensive and integrated charting facility which is accessed by typing STATISTICS or pressing the appropriate function key. This leads to a menu (yes, there is one!) which includes options for pie charts, scatter graphs, histograms and bar charts. Tables of corresponding statistics for each graph can be viewed at the press of a button. Graphs can be dumped out immediately to an Epson compatible printer or saved to disc. In fact, in order to print a graph out on an Integrex colour printer, it is necessary to save the screen first and then print it from the desktop using the RISC-OS printer drivers. The graph facilities, while adequate for most purposes, are perhaps the most unfriendly part of the program. Quest does not require the user to define the type of data being entered. So, when you choose to view a graph, the program cannot check to see if the fields you are using will produce sensible results. Instead, it proceeds to check through all the records before giving an obscure error message where it encounters inappropriate data types. Unfortunately, the manual is rather brief in its treatment of statistics. As this aspect of the software is probably the most difficult for unsophisticated users to master, a more step by step approach with worked examples would have been welcome. For instance, the handbook introduces the use of order files for constructing bar charts but fails to give an adequate explanation of how to derive these. 4.7 Archimedes Quest is a worthy, if unexciting, product. I think it should have been possible to build on its existing strengths while taking on board the benefits of working as a true RISC-OS application. As it turns out, it has merely accomplished the former. 4.7 The large number of data files available for the program allied to the extensive support materials produced, will ensure that it will continue to have its adherents. 4.7 Quest is not really the way forward in 32 bit databases but it certainly does offer excellent value for money. For £30 you get a program with a wealth of features and it can be networked at no extra cost. Archimedes Quest may look primitive when compared to glossier offerings such as Minerva’s Multistore but, at nearly a tenth of the price, it may still prove to be an attractive offering to schools with hard pressed budgets. The real test of it will be how will it fare in the face of competition from the very fully featured and attractively priced Key Plus offering from ITV Schools. 4.7 Archimedes Quest costs £30 and is available from the Advisory Unit for Microtechnology in Education. A 4.7 4.7 The CITIZEN IFDD − A “Whoppy”? 4.7 Ned Abell 4.7 The Archive team will soon be seeing new removable hard discs hitting the office telephones in June or July with the launch of a Citizen Europe system delayed from “early 1991”. One version was previewed at last year’s Which Computer Show at the NEC. 4.7 If your computer does not already have a Winchester disc or a second floppy, this product could well be for you as it’s a large capacity 3½“ Floppy Disc Drive, (presumably with the “I” standing for Intelligent?). 4.7 The IFDD will take a standard 3½“ floppy disc and read (but not write) the files on it but its interesting new feature is that it will also read and write to new high capacity 3½” metal-media removable discs. There will be two different IFDD versions offered, one accepting 4M discs scheduled for release in June and the other taking 20M discs which will be released towards the end of the year. I understand the discs are not interchangeable. 4.7 Read, Read Write 4.7 The IFDD reads ordinary 3½“ discs for both 1.44 M and 720 K formatted capacities, whilst it also acts as a large storage medium that can be removed to a safe place. The drive unit is 101 x 25 x 153 mm (the same approximate size as a current floppy drive) and works with a SCSI interface that can be supplied by Citizen on a board 101 x 8 x 154 mm and the drive weighs 600 grams. Some testing will be required to see how the Citizen interface will mate with the Archimedes and whether existing Archimedes SCSI podules will control the new drives and I’m hoping to acquire a complete unit for “the hardware team”. 4.7 I understand that the higher capacity is achieved for the 20M drive at 540 tracks per inch at 600 rpm and 63 sectors per track. It is possible that the discs use special patterns on the surface, probably using CD drive optical technology to correct the head’s position over the disc guide line and thus transfer the data which it will do at 3½ Mbit per second at an average access time of 50ms. The discs will be initially supplied by Maxell and TDK. 4.7 Whoppies!! or is it Flopchesters?? 4.7 The idea must be that you can fit an IFDD as your only conventional drive and store larger quantities of data yet still retain the ability to read your old discs. Old files could then be copied through memory to the new medium. I expect the new discs to have a write protect switch like a conventional disc. 4.7 If you send discs through the post − beware. If you mail an IFDD disc to someone they must have an IFDD of the right size to read it. If you want to send a standard 3½“ disc, you can’t write information to it on an IFDD, so its best to think about running both systems − along with the 5¼” you have for the PCemulator because it was left over from the Model B! 4.7 Options 4.7 In the Archimedes market, the most likely use for an IFDD would be to give the single drive home user both a second facia-mounted drive and a hard sized disc, with the ability to copy conventional discs put in the IFDD source to the existing destination drive 0. Archiving could be done from a source on drive 0 to backup storage on the high capacity IFDD and you could copy high capacity IFDD discs via the computers memory to either a new disc in the same drive or to lots of standard floppies in the other! Any system will take some careful thought to help your particular applications. 4.7 New computers? 4.7 The implication for the whole Acorn range is interesting. Do we see the emergence of new home machines with larger levels of RAM and high processor speed to cope with greater windowed multi-tasking but only one 20M IFDD disc? It would make a lot of sense if the new ARM portable has a whoppy, a serial port and no hard disc. Equipment manufacturers will have access to the 4M drives in a couple of weeks. There are no exact retail price details as yet but its expected that 4M drives will be about 30% up on the cost of existing 3½“ drives and 20M versions will be the equivalent price to conventional 20M Winchesters. The success of the whole project will depend on which manufacturers start fitting them to computers and thus on Citizen’s initial pricing policy and especially on the price of the discs. Maxell say that on launch they are expecting 4M end user disc prices of £90-100 per box of 10. 4.7 Knitting fog! 4.7 The technology looks very good, if somewhat slower than the 20ms access Micronet removable discs. No doubt access times will improve. If these IFDD units can be supplied to the customer at a price lower than equivalent conventional hard disc storage, with Citizen making excellent royalties from the disc sales and offering the technology to other manufacturers at reasonable cost, then they could become the industry standard and replace the standard floppy because they will still read the older discs − yet the 5¼“ disc is still taking a long time to die and some people are still using 8” − so do we want yet another format? Given the upward compatibility of the IFDD, I think we can cope with another format and I certainly will be buying removable hard discs. The only question is − which one? I think the price and availability of the discs themselves will decide it − a sort of pounds per Megabyte equation being needed. In my case, I’m staggered to see I’ve got 155 discs in boxes in front of me − that’s 124M − plus quite a few blanks so I put together a table of likely costs. 4.7 The cost is certainly an important factor but my ability to manage my existing data is more important! Many of my discs are backup copies and there is much pruning to be done. Buying !Spark has made the collection physically smaller. I also need the ability to find a font, letter or picture quickly and thus my discs are labelled in this generic fashion. The range of applications I use is limited but putting several on a disc is difficult because of the 800k floppy limit. If I had a hard disc, I would use it to hold commonly used programs and current projects, a removable system allows that and security. Looking ahead is like knitting fog but I can see the advantage of having all my Fonts with !Impression, !PDriver and !system all on one disc with room to spare!! 4.7 I’m therefore looking at this whoppy option extremely closely and hope to write more on this soon, even if I don’t intend to hurl them across the office! A 4.7 4.7 Storage Costs for Removable Discs 4.7 Costs per Mbyte based on 150M of data. 4.7 Archive February 91 prices for a A310 including podules. (Therefore add 2.5% for VAT increase.) 4.7 Nº of media 2nd drive £ 4.7 Media cost cost per 4.7 for 150M £ £ Mbyte 4.7 Floppies 187.5 225.00 100 2.2 4.7 IFDD-4 37.5 356.25 130 3.2 4.7 (projected) 4.7 MicroNet 3.6 285.70 595 6.7 4.7 42M 4.7 IFDD-20 7.50 356.25 400 5.0 4.7 (projected based on 20M Hard disc prices inc. podule and proportional media costs) 4.7 Assuming you need a fixed disc to store all the data and you need room to grow... 4.7 Internal Fixed Hard Drives 4.7 Costs per Megabyte based on 200 Megabytes 4.7 200M Oak SCSI 1240.00 6.2 4.7 200M IDE 1033.85 5.2 4.7 4.7 Technoscan II Upgrade 4.7 Alan Mothersole 4.7 Technomatic have recently announced a software upgrade for existing users of their Technoscan hand-held CCD scanner. This upgrade is available for £22.50 +VAT and consists of a new ROM to fit onto the interface board, a fitting instruction sheet, new disc based software and a comprehensive manual. (Readers may like to refer back to Archive 3.5 p50, where I reviewed the original scanner.) 4.7 The ROM is easy to fit provided the orientation if the original is observed. The instructions are easy to follow. Powering up the computer and typing *Podules from the supervisor prompt displays the message ‘technoscan II scanner podule V2.00’. 4.7 The disc contains the same sample scanned images as before but has a new application file for the scanner. Double clicking on this mounts the scanner icon on the icon bar adjacent to the drive icons. Clicking on this opens a task window and clicking <menu> displays the options. The application is multi-tasking, except during scanning, and can be used with the interactive !Help application. 4.7 The purpose of this review is to describe the main differences between Mark I and Mark II scanners. The software versions are 0.95 and 1.91 respectively. 4.7 My first observation was that Technomatic have changed the scanning head sold with the software however there did not appear to be any electrical of software incompatibilities between the new software and my old scan head. 4.7 True monochrome scanning in Letter mode now works correctly and is available at the highest resolution of 400 dpi. Clearly, one of the main uses for scanners is in DTP and therefore the author has kept the memory requirement to a minimum of 64k to ensure its compatibility with Impression, Ovation, Tempest, etc. on a 1Mbyte machine. 4.7 The manual now runs to 55 pages of well presented tutorial, technical and problem solving content. 4.7 On the scan head, the resolution switch action has been changed such that rather than changing the size of the scanned image it now changed the number of pixels scanned across the full width. With the original scanner, sprites could only be saved as mode 12 sprites but with the Mark II, the default modes are 12, 20, 0 and 18 for 16 grey, 8 grey, mono (hi-res) and mono (lo-res) respectively but the sprites can be saved into any screen mode. 4.7 Further to this, it is now possible to load any (default mode) sprite back into the scanner task window. This is a great boon for anyone wishing to use the powerful ‘cut’ facility or palette changes on a previously saved sprite. The basic scanning method remains unchanged except that there is now an accompanying ‘beep’ to the changed screen border colour when scanning is too fast. This saves you from having to look at both the screen and the scanner at the same time! 4.7 Additional set-up options can be defined prior to scanning − to preset the size of sprite, scanner resolution, image resolution and zoom ratio. The latter allows the x to y ratio to be fixed. An additional useful feature is an auto shut down of the scan head if scanning has not been started after a preset time. This will help to prolong the life of the CCD sensor. 4.7 Extra zoom features are available for processing a scanned image. ‘Normalise’ will ensure that the saved sprite will have the correct size and aspect ratio of the original object. ‘Fit to Screen’ reduces the size of the displayed image to fit onto the screen but maintaining the correct aspect ratio. The Edit options have been updated to include rotation of the sprite by +/- 90 degrees. 4.7 Another improvement has been made with the palette. The original version allowed the user to change the colour tint of the two extreme colours only but the new software takes a different approach. A set of vertical ‘volume control’ slider bars are shown which can be used to adjust the grey levels from black to white of each of the grey levels or allocate a non-grey colour to a grey level. It is therefore possible to introduce colour to a black and white sprite. This could be very useful in DTP. 4.7 Finally, the option of printing out the sprite has been provided without having to load in !Paint was necessary as before. Printing is done with the RISC-OS drivers and this review was made with Version 2 of !PrinterDM. It is possible to set orientation, magnification, margin and number of copies. This appeared to work quite satisfactorily. 4.7 In conclusion, the upgrade appears to be a worthwhile investment and a significant improvement over the original. A 4.7 4.7 Help!!!! 4.7 • Dynamic mouse resolution − I have been told that there is a module (?) for the Archimedes which makes the resolution of the mouse “dynamic” (i.e. transfers fast/slow mouse movements into big/small pointer movements); can anyone tell me if this is so and where to obtain this software? Jochen Konietzko, Fuehlinger Weg 15, W-5000 Koeln 71, Germany. 4.7 • Graphics and music − I want to synchronise graphics & music using sound-tracker and Maestro files from BASIC V or using SWI’s. Can anyone help? D.P.Allen, 12 Grove Farm Park, Mytchett, Camberley, Surrey, GU16 6AQ. 4.7 • Help for the handicapped − Many may not know that for a number of years, Aleph One have sold computer-enhanced bio-feedback systems which are used to help in the rehabilitation of physically handicapped persons. Signals emanating from muscle tension appear on the screen as graphs or are used to control video games. Aleph One have recently translated the software as a RISC-OS application and are looking for free or public domain games that can be made available, with the package, to these patients. If you know of any entertaining games that could be controlled by one or two joysticks or switches, please talk to Laurie van Someren at Aleph One on 0223- 811679 or fax him on 812713. 4.7 • HP DeskJet 500 problems − Has anyone had success in controlling the HP DeskJet 500 directly from BASIC V? I have been unable to alter the printer’s font characteristics e.g. bold, pitch, etc using the Archime des’ BASIC VDU command. To my disgust I have had little or no technical support from Hewlett Packard or my local HP dealer. Roger Darlington, 1 Fells Grove, Worsley, Manchester, M28 5JN. 4.7 Help offered 4.7 • Improved Hawk V9 utilities − Some ARM code image processing utilities have been written for the Hawk digitiser. These are corrected and enhanced versions of the Hawk utilities along with 1D and 2D Fast Fourier Transforms. If you are interested you should contact Claus Birkner, Gneisenaustr. 1B, W 5800 Hagen, W. Germany. 4.7 • Using an HP7475a plotter with the Archimedes − If anyone wants to know how to connect a HP7475a plotter to the Archimedes, especially if they need to use Archimedes PCB, they should contact Claus Birkner, Gneise naustr. 1B, W 5800 Hagen, West Germany. A 4.7 4.7 Figure 1 4.7 4.7 Figure 2 4.7 4.7 Figure 3 4.7 4.7 4th Dimension P.O. Box 4444, Sheffield. (0742-700661) 4.7 4mation Linden Lea, Rock Park, Barnstaple, Devon, EX32 9AQ. (0271- 45566) 4.7 Abacus Training 29 Okus Grove, Upper Stratton, Swindon, Wilts, SN2 6QA. 4.7 Acorn Computers Ltd Fulbourn Road, Cherry Hinton, Cambridge CB1 4JN. (0223-245200) (210685) 4.7 Alpine Software P.O.Box 25, Portadown, Craigavon, BT63 5UT. (0762- 342510) 4.7 Atomwide Ltd (p 8) 23 The Greenway, Orpington, Kent, BR5 2AY. (0689-838852) (896088) 4.7 Avisoft 11 Meadow Close, Wolvey, Hinckley, LE10 3LW. 4.7 Base5 (p4) PO Box 378, Woking, Surrey GU21 4DF. 4.7 Beebug Ltd 117 Hatfield Road, St Albans, Herts, AL1 4JS. (0727-40303) (60263) 4.7 Black Sheep Software P.O.Box 1831, London N15 3NE. 4.7 Clares Micro Supplies 98 Mid dlewich Road, Rudheath, Northwich, Cheshire, CW9 7DA. (0606-48511) (48512) 4.7 Colton Software (p14) 149-151 St Neots Road, Hardwick, Cambridge, CB3 7QJ. (0954-211472) (211607) 4.7 Computer Concepts (p30/31) Gaddesden Place, Hemel Hempstead, Herts, HP2 6EX. (0442-63933) (231632) 4.7 Cygnus Software 11 Newmarke Street, Leicester, LE1 5SS. 4.7 Dabhand Computing 5 Victoria Lane, Whitefield, Manchester, M25 6AL. (061-766-8423) (8425) 4.7 EMR Ltd 14 Mount Close, Wickford, Essex, SS11 8HG. (0702-335747) 4.7 Human Computer Interface Ltd 25 City Road, Cambridge CB1 1DP. (0223-314934) (462562) 4.7 Longman-Logotron Dales Brewery, Gwydir Street, Cambridge, CB1 2LJ. (0223-323656) (460208) 4.7 MEWsoft 11 Cressy Road, London, NW3 2NB. (071-267-2642) (482-6452) 4.7 Micro Studio Ltd 22 Churchgate Street, Soham, Ely, Cambridgeshire. 4.7 MJD Software 13 Burnham Way, London, W13 9YE. (081-567-4284) 4.7 Oak Solutions (p19) Cross Park House, Low Green, Rawdon, Leeds, LS19 6HA. (0532-502615) (506868) 4.7 Pandora Technology Ltd 9 St Marks Place, London, W11 1NS. (071-221-9653) (9654) 4.7 Pineapple Software 39 Brownlea Gardens, Seven Kings, Ilford, Essex, IG3 9NL. (081-599-1476) 4.7 Ray Maidstone 421 Sprowston Road, Norwich, NR3 4EH. (0603-407060) (417447) 4.7 Serious Statistical Software Lynwood, Benty Heath Lane, Willaston, South Wirral, L64 1SD. (051-327-4268) 4.7 Shenley Software 5 Coombefield Close, New Malden, Surrey, KT3 5QF. (081-949-3235) 4.7 Sherston Software Swan Barton, Sherston, Malmesbury, Wilts. SN16 0LH. (0666-840433) (840048) 4.7 Soft Rock Software 124 Marissal Road, Henbury, Bristol, BS10 7NP. (0272-503639 evenings) 4.7 Southern Printers 47 Drake Road, Willesborough, Ashford, Kent TN24 0UZ. (0233-633919) 4.7 Techsoft UK Ltd (p20) Old School Lane, Erryrs, Mold, Clwyd, CH7 4DA. (082-43318) 4.7 The Advisory Unit Endymion Road, Hatfield Herts, AL10 8AU. (07072-65443) (273651) 4.7 The Serial Port (p22) Burcott Manor, Wells, Somerset, BA5 1NH. (0243-531194) (531196) 4.7 Westbourne Services 34 Bradley Street, Wotton under Edge, Gloucester, GL12 7AR. 4.7 Wild Vision 15 Witney Way, Boldon Colliery, Tyne & Wear NE35 9PE. (091-519-1455) (1929) 4.7 ZCL Ltd Unit 1, Ringway Industrial Estate, Eastern Avenue, Lichfield, Staffs. (0543-416626) 4.7 4.7 4.7 4.7 Norwich Computer Services 96a Vauxhall Street, Norwich, NR2 2SD. 0603−766592 (−764011) 4.7 Archimedes viruses galore!? 4.8 Judging by some of the ridiculous scare-mongering in certain other magazines, you would think that Archimedes viruses were an extremely serious problem. There are a couple of Archimedes viruses around and they can be a nuisance but let’s not get the whole thing out of proportion. If you are swapping discs with other people and are worried about viruses, there are a number of PD inoculator and watch-dog type programs around − I’ll put something on the monthly program disc. 4.8 When a magazine puts a ‘benign virus’ on one of its program discs to ‘make a point’, it does make you wonder... It would be interesting to know how the Computer Crimes Unit would view it (see page 19) as it is now against the law to create or knowingly distribute a computer virus! 4.8 A540’s in stock 4.8 There is a distinct dearth of A540’s at the moment − well, that’s been true virtually ever since they first came on the market! We usually manage to get hold of about one or sometimes two a month, so they go out almost as soon as they come into stock. However, we have managed to get a couple of extra A540’s from one of our distributors and we haven’t, at the time of writing, got buyers for either of them. If you are inter ested, you will need to get on the phone to us fairly quickly. 4.8 Autoloaders for sale 4.8 After considerable delay in getting them from the States, the Xpress autoloaders are now becoming more freely available. If you are copying large numbers of Archimedes discs (or are paying someone else to copy them) it’s worth thinking about getting an autoloader. It’s just an external drive which attaches to your Archimedes and has a serial cable down which you send messages to tell the mechanism to load a new disc out of a 50-disc input hopper or throw the disc out into one of two output bins (e.g. accept and reject). They cost £2750 (inc VAT) which may sound a lot but, believe me, for anyone copying the numbers of discs that we are, they are worth every penny. If you want more details, let us know. 4.8 That’s it for now. Happy reading! 4.8 4.8 4.8 Products Available 4.8 • Arachnid is a real-time programming environment from Paul Fray Ltd (based on Spider for the BBC B). For £100 +VAT, you get a detailed manual with tutorial section plus a program which can be used to respond to external events such as switch closures, perform various timing tasks and control external events via whatever I/O ports you have installed on your computer. (Paul Fray Ltd’s phone number was wrongly quoted last month − it should be 0223-441134.) 4.8 • Conform − NorthWest SEMERC have produced a concept keyboard overlay generator. The main criterion of the software writers was that the package should be easy to use so it should be ideal in the primary sector of education. The price is £15 +VAT. 4.8 • Freddy Teddy’s Adventure − Topologika’s Freddy Teddy is off on his adventures again. After his first trips released under the program name “Freddy Teddy”, he is off again under the title, “Freddy Teddy’s Adventure”. For £19.95 +VAT (£21 through Archive) you get a storybook and a disc which provide counting games and puzzles that encourage logical thought and help children gain confidence in using their Archimedes computer. 4.8 • My World − This is an application produced by NorthWest SEMERC which allows children to manipulate Draw files. It is said to be “unlike any educational software on the market”. It costs £15 +VAT and comes with 20 example files to get users started. Simple Stuff Sampler (£7.50 + VAT) is also available and provides a further 17 screens to be used with My World. 4.8 • Primary WP − NorthWest SEMERC have produced a RISC-OS word-processor called Phases#2 aimed at primary schools. It comes with its own outline fonts, various sample documents, a keystrip and a double-ended manual − one end starts as the User Guide and the other end as Starting to Use Phases#2 and the two books meet in the middle. The price is £15 + £2.50 p&p plus VAT. Also available at £7.50 +VAT each are two Phases Support packs − The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Phases Borders Disc 1. 4.8 • Shareware disc Nº39 − this contains a number of items of educational interest and also some utilities: Algorithms (sorts, pattern matching, routing, etc), A-level Chemistry tutorial, Draw files summarising the RISC-OS applications, Compound interest and RPI calculators, BASIC FN’s to help plot graph axes, BASIC V mathematical FN’s, Depth of field and flash calculators for photography, Desktop backdrop, Disc copier (updated from S/w 2), Compacted screen sequence creator, Desktop file utilities, Converter from IBM WFN to outline fonts, Floating point calculator, SoundTracker -> Rhapsody converter, Desktop !Help provider. 4.8 • Speech! − Superior Software have given the Archimedes a voice called Speech! for just £19.95 (£19 through Archive). It uses the standard sound interface leaving the computer free to do other things. No extra hardware is needed. You can vary the pitch, speed, volume and voice either directly or through your own programs. You can even sing the words over a 4 octave range! It also comes with a program that will allow you to change the dictionary yourself. 4.8 • Speech!! − DT-Talk is an allophone based speech synthesizer which can synthesise any word in the English language. It integrates with the computer’s own sound system and can therefore be used alongside other sounds and music. It is available for £15 +VAT from Atomwide. 4.8 • Speech!!! − A third speech system is also now available from PEP Associates. This again links in with the sound system and can be programmed by the user. It uses phonemes to generate words (don’t ask me if that’s the same as being allophone based!) and is available for £25. It is called PEP Associates SpeechSystem but why they didn’t call it PEP Talk, I’ll never know! They have given us a public domain demonstration which we have put on this month’s program disc. 4.8 (All three speech systems have been sent to a reviewer, so watch (or listen to) this space..) 4.8 • Spreadsheet MkV − Contex Computing have released a low-priced RISC-OS compatible spreadsheet for just £15 +VAT. This is an initial price − early purchasers will get a printed manual, while stocks last. Thereaf ter, it will be available as a disc file. 4.8 Review software received... 4.8 We have received review copies of the following software and hardware: Conform, MyWorld + Simple Stuff Sampler, Phases#2 + Borders + The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Carewares 4 and 6, !Voice-Builder from MJD Software, Freddy Teddy’s Adventure, Avisoft Fast Array Sorts, PRES A3000 5¼“ interface & software, Viewpoints from Sherston Software. A 4.8 4.8 Government Health Warning − Reading this could seriously affect your spiritual health. 4.8 Did you listen to “Any questions” on Radio Four when they had the question, “Do you think that Christianity is relevant today?” (It was linked to a question about George Carey, the new Archbishop.) The answer from all four panellists was basically, “We need a moral code to live by. Christianity gives one, therefore it’s OK.” What a load of rubbish! If I were not a Christian, my response would be, “Why should we stick to Christian morality? Says who? Why is that any more of an authority than any other religion or indeed any other philosophy − like humanism for example?” As a Christian, my response is, “How dare they try to pinch the moral code and ignore the Person who gave it?!” 4.8 If you don’t believe that Christianity is actually true, you cannot claim the Christian moral code as any kind of authority. In my case, I believe that what Jesus said and did shows us the truth about God and allows us to know God personally and therefore I try to run this business in the way I think that God, whom I know and love, wants me to i.e. on Christian moral principles. I accept that I may be wrong in my basic assumption that Jesus is the truth about God... but at least it’s a logically consistent position! 4.8 4.8 Small Ads 4.8 • 30 colour palettes − send £4, or £3 + formatted disc, to R C Melling, 80 Severn Road, Culcheth, Warrington WA3 5EB. 4.8 • A3000, 2Mbyte, improved sound output. Will offer 2 month guarantee. £550 o.n.o. Machine in Reading, but call Ian on Romsey (0794) 22086. 4.8 • A310, 20M HD approx 10M software inc PC emulator & PipeDream, Philips monitor, CC podule, spare drive, books etc. (mouse sometimes sticks) £850. (Sale due to return to DOS. Sob!) P A Hughes, 081-840-5650 after 6 p.m. 4.8 • A310M base, 2-slot bp, software £500. 40M internal hard disk £250. Phone 0895-30826. 4.8 • A310M, 4M upgrade, 40M drive, 5¼“ drive, CC ROM/RAM podule lots of software £999. Phone Gordon Barker on 021-705-1611. 4.8 • Acorn DTP £40, Genesis £25, PC Emulator (DR-DOS) £45, FWPlus II £45. All unopened. Phone Peter on 0923-675590. 4.8 • Apocalypse £10; Interdictor (1) £10; Conqueror £8; CIS Minipack 5 (Fish, Fireball 2, Pon) £16; Render Bender £35. Ring Mark on 0285-654346 evenings. 4.8 • Apocalypse £10; Arcade Soccer £8; Chocks Away £9; Conqueror £3; Corruption £3; Drop Ship £8; E-Type £8; Holed Out £8; Nevryon £8; Olympics £8; Pysanki £8; Quazer £3; U.I.M. £10. Ring John on 081-898- 0447. 4.8 • !DeskAAsm − Desktop front end for Acorn Assembler. Send £5 to Darren Sillett, 43 Kingfisher Walk, Ash, Aldershot GU12 6RF. 4.8 • Digitisation − Artwork or VHS tape images digitised. Call Ned Abel on 0292−2249. Prices by arrangement. 4.8 • Price reduction − Future Software are now offering a compilation of their games Mindwarp and Cobra for £5. Contact R Millican, Future Software, 10 Stokesay, Bidston, Birkenhead, L43 7PV. 4.8 • SigmaSheet, very recent version (2.01) £25 o.n.o. Phone Stuart Bell on 0273-304825. 4.8 • Taxan 770 Plus low radiation multisync monitor (never used) £295 or consider exchange for HP Deskjet. Phone Mick Cattell on 0742-745209. 4.8 • Wanted RISC-OS PRM. In exchange, I will give the following: Desktop Games, Corruption, Graphic Writer, PC Emulator, Max Gammon and Quazer. Phone Frode Myklebust on 010-47-71-65209 (Norway). 4.8 • Z88 with 128K RAM, charger, mains adaptor, Archimedes link, utils. Unused present. £200. Epson RX little used £100. Phone Andy on 0278-751- 317 (Somerset). 4.8 Charity Sales − The following items are available for sale in aid of charity. PLEASE do not just send money − ring us on 0603-766592 to check if the items are still available. Thank you. 4.8 (If you have unwanted software or hardware for Archimedes computers, please send it in to the Archive office. If you have larger items where post would be expensive, just send us details of the item(s) and how the purchaser can get hold of them.) 4.8 User Guides £2 + £3 postage, A3000 1M upgrade £45, Interdictor 1 £6, Superior Golf £8, Trivial Pursuit £8, White Magic £8, Battle Tank £6, Alien Invasion £6, Terramex £7, Repton £6, Missile Control £4, Orion £6, ArcWriter £4, Conqueror £6, Logistix £30, Teletext adaptor £20, Acorn I/ O podule £45, Serial Interface/buffer for Epson FX80 £15. A 4.8 4.8 Ace Computing 4.8 New 4.8 4.8 Computer Concepts 4.8 New 4.8 4.8 Computer Concepts 4.8 New 4.8 4.8 Hints and Tips 4.8 • ARM code errata − The following is for all those who have an unshak able faith in the integrity of Acorn’s code: 4.8 The code given to return from SWI “OS_ BreakPt” on page 736 of the PRMs is incorrect. The following works. 4.8 .backtobreak% 4.8 SWI “OS_EnterOS” 4.8 ADR R14,breaksave 4.8 LDMIA R14,{r0-r14 }^ 4.8 LDR R14,[R14,#15*4] 4.8 ADD R14,R14,#4 4.8 MOVS PC,R14 4.8 The code given on page 231 of the old BASIC User Guide (under CALL) is incorrect. For example, to use MATCH, the line tokenisation routine, the following code will work. This has been corrected in the new BASIC User Guide. 4.8 .tokenise 4.8 STMFD R13!,{r14 } 4.8 ADD R0,R14,#18*4 4.8 ADR R1,source 4.8 ADR R2,dest 4.8 MOV R3,#1 4.8 MOV R4,#0 4.8 ADR R14,cominghome 4.8 MOV PC,R0 4.8 .cominghome 4.8 LDMFD R13!,{pc } 4.8 .source 4.8 EQUS STRING$(90,CHR$(0)) ALIGN 4.8 .dest 4.8 EQUS STRING$(90,CHR$(0)) ALIGN 4.8 J Heher, South Africa 4.8 • BASIC printing to a DeskJet Plus − The April issue of Archive contained a Help!!! plea about printing from Archimedes BASIC to a DeskJet 500. I have a DeskJet Plus and have successfully printed from BASIC. For reference, my printer is normally set with the function switches 6 and 8 in bank A and 2 in bank B up, all others are down. 4.8 To print, I use the command VDU 2,1,27,1,38, 1,107,1,49,1,71 (see Line Termination in Appendix 8.19 of the Owner’s Manual). Here is an example of how it can be used: 4.8 10 REM >PrintTest 4.8 20 VDU 2,1,27,1,38,1,107,1,49,1,71 4.8 30 PRINT “TEST OF NORMAL PRINTING” 4.8 40 VDU 1,27,1,38,1,100,1,49,1,68 4.8 50 PRINT “This is underlined” 4.8 60 VDU 1,27,1,38,100,1,64 4.8 70 VDU 1,27,1,40,1,115,1,51,1,66 4.8 80 PRINT “This is BOLD printing” 4.8 90 VDU 1,27,1,40,1,115,1,48,1,66 4.8 100 VDU 1,27,1,40,1,115,1,50,1,48, 1,72 4.8 110 PRINT “This is 20 PITCH” 4.8 120 VDU 1,27,1,69 :REM reset printer 4.8 130 VDU 3 4.8 140 END 4.8 A Kitchenside, Weybridge 4.8 • Big memory tips − As a footnote to my own article in last month’s Archive on making best use of machines with more than 1M memory, I’d like to add one more tip. I was reminded by a review of Protext, which noted that the current version does not multi-task, that my eleventh tip might have been, “boycott non multi-tasking packages”. Since, with 1M, you couldn’t really multi-task two significant applications, this was not a problem. Now, it’s a real pain in the neck not to be able to have several applications with simultaneously active windows, much of the power and ease-of-use of RISC-OS is being un-used and it’s annoying knowing that 3M of your upgrade is being wasted! 4.8 So, unless there’s a really good reason such as a time-critical sound sampler or video screen grabber, I suggest that we boycott such packages. Then, software producers would have to bring them up to date and not try to palm us off with “Arthur programs with !Run and !Boot files”. In an ideal world, software sellers would refuse to stock them but at least they could be marked as such, perhaps indicating their antiquity by listing them in a suitable script? Stuart Bell, Brighton. 4.8 • C book − I was recommended a good C book which I used on a C short course I attended: The Waite Group’s “New C Primer Plus”, First Edition 1990, editor Howard W Sams & Co, ISBN 0−672−22687−1. It covers ANSI C, UNIX, Microsoft C and Turbo C. S. Stel, Netherlands. 4.8 • ChangeFSI update − A new version of ChangeFSI v0.79 is available from Acorn Direct for £19.95. This will handle more image formats than would v0.69: Degas PI1, PI2 & PI3, !Translator Clear, MacPaint 579x720x1 bit/ pixel, ZSoft .PCX, Windows3 .BMP, Pineapple 16 bit/pixel, UNIX rle, PC TGA. Unfortunately it will not run from the desktop under !ChangeFSI (Shareware Disc 21) as is. This is because version 0.79 is 94 Kbytes long, compared with 74K for v0.69. The solution is to edit the !Run file of !ChangeFSI and increase the WimpSlot from 128K to 160K. All is then well. A Quayle, Chester 4.8 • C txt library − This idea was inspired by the article ‘Introduction to C’ – Part 5, in Archive 3.6. This gave a complete RISC-OS application using the libraries supplied with Release 3 of Acorn C. In particular, it used the ‘txt’ library to provide a window to display text generated by the sample program. This requires a minimum of effort by the programmer since the library looks after most of the problems. 4.8 Although it works as described, it has two major disadvantages. The first is the slow speed during text generation. The second is the operation of the window controls. In particular, the cursor control keys cannot be used to move the text through the window, the close icon has no effect and the vertical scroll bars can only be dragged. Here are some techniques which overcome these problems. 4.8 Improved text generation speed turns out to be a very simple modifi cation since the cause of the slow operation is the redrawing of the window for every item added to the text buffer using, for example, the txt_insertstring function. Two extra lines are required; the first turns off the display updates when text generation starts and the second turns it back on when the operation is complete. The lines shown below should be inserted immediately after the visdelay_begin() statement and immediately before the visdelay_ end() statement in the original program function sysvars_to_text(). 4.8 /* turn off display update */ 4.8 txt_setcharoptions(t, txt_DISPLAY, FALSE); 4.8 4.8 /* turn on display update */ 4.8 txt_setcharoptions(t, txt_DISPLAY, TRUE); 4.8 Improving text window control requires rather more code but again the principle is fairly straightforward. Firstly an event handler has to be registered for the text window following its successful creation by the txt_new() function using the following statement: 4.8 /* register the text window event handler */ 4.8 txt_eventhandler(t, user_txevent, NULL); 4.8 This registers the function user_txevent which will be called to process text window events. 4.8 The function itself has to process all the events which the user requires. A sample function is given below which is commented to show which events are being processed. The keyboard key macro definitions given in ‘akbd.h’ are used for consistency but, in addition, the ‘Home’ key must also be defined using a macro as this is omitted from ‘akbd.h’. The actual key values required are defined in the PRM, page 1198 and the macro definitions are given in file ‘akbd.h’. Note, however, that the definitions given for both akbd_ PageUpK and akbd_PageDownK are wrong so I have not used these but used their correct definition in the following code. The value txt_ EXTRACODE is added to the key value to represent the equivalent window operation. A full list of these is given on page 325 of the ANSI C Release 3. 4.8 4.8 #include “akbd.h” 4.8 4.8 #define HOME (30) 4.8 4.8 /*********************************** 4.8 user_txevent text window event handler 4.8 t text object 4.8 h event handle 4.8 ***********************************/ 4.8 void user_txevent(txt t, void *h) 4.8 {lines ; /* number of lines in window */ 4.8 4.8 h = h; 4.8 while (txt_queue(t) > 0) 4.8 {number of lines visible in window */ 4.8 lines = txt_visiblelinecount(t); 4.8 4.8 /* process the next user event code */ 4.8 switch (txt_get(t)) 4.8 {+ akbd_Fn+127: 4.8 /* close window icon */ 4.8 txt_hide(t); 4.8 break; 4.8 4.8 case akbd_UpK: 4.8 case txt_EXTRACODE + akbd_UpK: 4.8 case txt_EXTRACODE + akbd_Sh + akbd_Ctl + akbd_UpK: 4.8 /* scroll up one line */ 4.8 txt_movevertical(t, –1, TRUE); 4.8 break; 4.8 4.8 case akbd_DownK: 4.8 case txt_EXTRACODE + akbd_DownK: 4.8 case txt_EXTRACODE + akbd_Sh + akbd_Ctl + akbd_DownK: 4.8 /* scroll down one line */ 4.8 txt_movevertical(t, 1, TRUE); 4.8 break; 4.8 4.8 case akbd_Sh + akbd_UpK: 4.8 case txt_EXTRACODE + akbd_Sh + akbd_UpK: 4.8 /* scroll up one page */ 4.8 txt_movevertical(t, -lines, FALSE); 4.8 break; 4.8 case akbd_Sh + akbd_DownK: 4.8 case txt_EXTRACODE + akbd_Sh + akbd_DownK: 4.8 /* scroll down one page */ 4.8 txt_movevertical(t, lines, FALSE); 4.8 break; 4.8 4.8 case akbd_Ctl + akbd_UpK: 4.8 case HOME: 4.8 /* move to start of text */ 4.8 txt_setdot(t, 0); 4.8 break; 4.8 4.8 case akbd_Ctl + akbd_DownK: 4.8 case akbd_Sh + akbd_CopyK: 4.8 /* move to end of text */ 4.8 txt_setdot(t, txt_size(t)); 4.8 break; 4.8 4.8 default: 4.8 break; 4.8 } 4.8 } 4.8 return; 4.8 } 4.8 David Scott, Stockport 4.8 • Connection problems − If you are having connection problems with RS423 connectors, or video or printer − or a dongle, it may be because the plugs are not ‘going home’ properly into the sockets on the back of the computer. I have noticed this particularly on A540’s, but it could also occur on other Archimedes computers. This may be because the fixing pillars either side of the socket are too high. The solution it to take a pair of pliers (or a box spanner if you have a suitable sized one) and remove each of the pillars in turn, take off the washer and screw the pillar back in. That extra millimetre can make all the difference. 4.8 • CPC monitor − When my multisync died on me suddenly and I was forced to make do with what I had − a well worn Amstrad CPC green screen monitor. In practice it was fairly easy to connect the six-pin CPC connector to the nine-pin connector on the A3000: 4.8 Archimedes CPC 4.8 1, 2 & 3 − 6 4.8 6, 7, 8 & 9 − 5 4.8 5 − 4 4.8 Naturally, it is impossible to use the multisync modes but it certainly is almost as sharp a picture on the tube as on my multisync and much cheaper. If your main interest is games I wouldn’t recommend it but for most business uses it is perfectly all right. I guess you could get a second hand green CPC monitor for next to nothing in the UK as many owners have exchanged them for the new CPC monitors. Ask your local dealer! A spare monitor could come in handy any day! Tord Eriksson, Sweden. 4.8 • !Edit − For what seems like an eternity I have been wrestling with the problem of importing text from a wordprocessor (in my case View). What I wanted to do was free the text from newline characters in order that, on loading it into Ovation, it could be formatted to new column width, in whatever point size, without the newline control code producing extra linefeeds. At the same time, it should retain the carriage returns marking the paragraphs and multi-line spacing. This way I did not lose all the style. What follows is how I do it . It might seem obvious but it could help someone who is as thick as me. If I have missed the point would some kind person tell me before I go mad. 4.8 After loading your text into !Edit, go through the text ensuring that there are double returns at the end of each paragraph and on multiple line text like program listings or poetry. 4.8 My technique is firstly to change double returns into something which is unlikely to appear elsewhere in the text, thus: 4.8 Press <F4> to select Find 4.8 In the Find dialogue box enter \n\n <return> 4.8 In the Replace dialogue box enter ZCZC<return> 4.8 Click on the Magic Character box 4.8 Click on the Go box 4.8 Click on End of File Replace 4.8 Click on Stop 4.8 Press <ctrl-up> to move the cursor to the top 4.8 Now, to replace the single returns: 4.8 Press <F4> to select Find 4.8 In the Find dialogue box enter \n <return> 4.8 In the Replace dialogue box press <space> 4.8 Click on Go 4.8 Click on End of File Replace 4.8 Click on Stop 4.8 Press <ctrl-up> 4.8 Then, to restore the double returns to single ones: 4.8 Press <F4> to select Find 4.8 In the Find dialogue box enter ZCZC<return> 4.8 In the Replace dialogue box enter \n <return> 4.8 Click on Go 4.8 Click on End of File replace 4.8 Click on Stop 4.8 You should have your text with the paragraph and multi-line spacing intact. (Simplified from a hint sent in by R Follett, Winnersh, Berks.) 4.8 • Improving sound quality − Further to the comments by Jeremy Mears (Archive 4.7 p 21) there is no need, on the A3000, to actually solder to the motherboard. You can make contact to the appropriate resistors using micro test clips (Tandy − £1.50 for four). This would, I suppose, still invalidate the warranty but is less obvious than blobs of solder on the p.c.b.! To get access to the resistors, you have to remove the disc drive by unscrewing it from underneath. R86 is under the keyboard side of the drive whereas R99 is under the middle of the drive. Pin 1 of the expansion port is the furthest right (looking from the keyboard side of the computer). Gerald Williams, Aldershot. 4.8 • Multiple height and width text printing − I know that the emphasis these days is on programs which multi-task and use mode 12 on the desktop but not every program is suitable for this and some of these programs require larger than usual height characters. 4.8 I am (slowly) developing a word game for the Archimedes, from one I wrote last year on my Model B. The “B” version uses mode 2, with double height routines written in machine code for speed. The original version of this code was quite “illegal” and would not work on a Master but it was fast! With it, I could also have text printed 3 or even 4 times normal height just as quickly. However, I am new to the Archimedes and ARM code is currently beyond me, so after trying various routines in BASIC I came across VDU23,17,7. This gives characters at any height and any width and is very fast! I can even get half width which gives the impression of mode 1 characters in mode 2. Also, it works in most Screen modes (except 3, 6 & 7). 4.8 I’ve put together a short routine which demonstrates how easy and fast this routine is. To use it, all you have to do is append the PROCedure to your program and call it with the colour you wish it to appear in, the X & Y positions, the height and width of the characters and the Text$ − the routine will do the rest! One point to bear in mind, however, is that text is printed using the graphic cursor, i.e. under VDU 5 and MOVE or PLOT, rather than the text cursor and VDU 31, X%,Y%. 4.8 Even though this demonstration program is about 20 lines long, the only bits you need are in PROCtext(colour, X_co_ord, Y_co_ord, Height, Width, Text$). The function FNvdu simply returns the text width of the screen mode window in use and this is used to check if lines are too long in the first line of PROCtext. The second line in PROCtext is personal as I like being able to centralise text without effort! To do so, just set X% to -1. The %110 sets bits 1 and 2 so that both characters and spacing are altered at the same time. %100 sets spacing, while %010 will alter just character sizes. It is also possible to use 0.5 as Height or Width but that works better in “chunky” modes, like 2 rather than 12. When the width is set to an odd number, the “auto-centralising” is sometimes a little off so you may prefer to set up the X co-ord manually. 4.8 REM >$.Height/Wid.!RunImage 4.8 : 4.8 DIM block% 12, output% 12 4.8 MODE12:COLOUR3 4.8 : 4.8 PROCtext(1,-1,1,2,3,“Multi Height & Width!”) 4.8 PROCtext(2,-1,4,2,1,“Double Height, Normal Width”) 4.8 PROCtext(3,-1,7,1,2,“Normal Height, Double Width”) 4.8 PROCtext(4,-1,10,3,3,“3 * 3 Format”) 4.8 PROCtext(5,-1,15,4,1,“Ridiculous! 4 X 1 !!”) 4.8 PROCtext(6,-1,20,1,1,“You should reset the height & width 4.8 before finishing”) 4.8 PROCtext(6,-1,21,1,1,“but as it stands the PROCedure will 4.8 do this anyway”) 4.8 END 4.8 : 4.8 DEFPROCtext(C%,X%,Y%,H,W,T$) 4.8 F%=FNvdu 4.8 IF F%-(LENT$*W)<=0 THEN ERROR 300,“Line too long” 4.8 GCOL C% 4.8 Y%=1000-(Y%*32) 4.8 IF X%=-1 THEN X%=(F%-LENT$*2)/(W*2) 4.8 IF W=1 THEN X%=(F%-LENT$)/4 4.8 X%=X%*32 4.8 VDU 23,17,7,%110,W*8;H*8;0; 4.8 VDU 5,25,4,X%;Y%; 4.8 PRINT T$ 4.8 VDU 4,23,17,7,%110,8;8;0; 4.8 ENDPROC 4.8 : 4.8 DEF FNvdu 4.8 !block%=256 4.8 block%!4=-1 4.8 SYS“OS_ReadVduVariables”,block%, 4.8 output% 4.8 =!output% 4.8 • Off screen desktop windows − Normally, the filer and switcher windows are forced to stay within the confines of the screen but, by altering their template files, it is possible to make them move ‘off screen’ and thus help to reduce window ‘clutter’. 4.8 To do this, you have to copy the window templates from the DeskFS to a directory called Templates. First, create a directory called Templates in the root directory of your harddisc or ‘workdisc’ and then type the following: 4.8 *deskfs 4.8 *copy templates.filer scsifs::scsidisc4.$.templates.filer 4.8 *copy templates.switcher scsifs::scsidisc4.$.templates.filer 4.8 (You can also copy netfiler, palette and wimp windows across if required.) 4.8 Load the window template data into !FormEd (Shareware Disc 20) and set the ‘no bounds’ option for each window. Then, edit your disc !boot file to include the following line: 4.8 Set Wimp$Path scsifs::scsidisc4. 4.8 (or whatever your system is!) Don’t forget the full stop at the end. This points Wimp$Path in the direction of the updated windows. 4.8 Finally re-boot your machine to see the result! M Roscoe, Ealing 4.8 • PrinterDM with the Star LC24−10 − I was interested to see the note on !PrinterDM and the LC24-10 in March’s edition of Archive. May I draw your attention to the “Hint and Tip” which I had published in the March edition of Risc User on the same subject but concerning a different problem. I was initially disappointed in the results I obtained with Impression Junior (and from the Ovation test disc and, to a lesser extent, !Draw printouts). This was due to some lines of text having a marked “slewed” effect. After speaking to Star, and much sleuthing, I tracked down the problem to the very same line in the PrData file of !PrinterDM (version 1.12). There is apparently some incompatibility between the Star and the Epson LQ800. The former does not like the “zero absolute tab” command used to obtain the CR without LF. The solution was to substitute the commands used in the FX80 module, although modified to use the correct line feed command for 24 pin printers. With my version of !PrinterDM I have not experienced any squashed text with the 24/180 inch feed (could the writer have been in IBM mode where the command gives n/216 inches rather than n/180 inches?) but the bigger feed suggested in March’s tip could equally well be used. The modified line is as follows: 4.8 line_epilogue “<27>A<0><13><27>2<27>J<24>” 4.8 I’m surprised that this matter has not previously been commented on, especially as I think it also applies to the XB24-10. A.F. Taylor, Poole 4.8 • Quattro to Schema transfer − To move data files from Quattro, first save the file with a WKI extension. Then you can use Schema’s !sch123 to translate the file into Schema format. This method leaves all sorts of spurious bits and pieces which have to be edited out by hand but it does work. M Green, Devon 4.8 • Quitting First Word Plus − If you quit First Word Plus (release 2) from the task manager while a text file is loaded, you will be thrown out of the desktop. If other applications are running that may object e.g. Draw, Paint, etc, they will announce what is about to happen and give you a chance to prevent it. Otherwise you will lose any files that you may have been working on in First Word Plus. R Bunnett, Swanley 4.8 • Reading disc names − For those software writers who need to check that the user has inserted an appropriate disc in the disc drive the following function returns the name if the disc currently inserted: 4.8 DIM block% 5 4.8 : 4.8 DEF FNdiscname 4.8 SYS “OS_GBPB”,5,,block% 4.8 ?(block%+?block% +1)=13 4.8 =$(block%+1) 4.8 M Sawle, Hampshire 4.8 • !Schema VAT rate − New spreadsheets are created with various user names available, one of which is “Vat”. To change this from 0.15 to 0.175, look in the !Schema directory and then in the Menu directory and you should find a file called StartUp. This has a write-lock on it so you will have to use ‘Access’ off the filer menu to enable it to be changed. At the end of this file are a number of lines that start with ‘putusn’, the first of which is the Vat rate which simply needs to be changed before the file is again saved and the write-lock access restored. Ian Hamilton, Harrow. 4.8 • Spaced filenames − If you want a <space> in a disc or file name, use a hard space. This is available by pressing either <alt><1><6><0> or <alt><space>. You should note that if you do use it then you can’t use the copy key on a catalogue because the Archimedes thinks that the character is a normal space (which is illegal in a filename). E Hughes, Derbyshire 4.8 • Twin World cheats − The file SavedGame can be edited using !Edit to cheat. Byte values of interest include: 4.8 Byte 1 = Level (Maximum = 22 = &16) 4.8 Byte 4 = Red Spells (Maximum 99 = &63) 4.8 Byte 5 = Blue Spells (Maximum 99 = &63) 4.8 Byte 6 = Green Spells (Maximum 99 = &63) 4.8 Bytes 8-11 = Score, low byte first. (Maximum = 999999 = &F423F ) 4.8 Byte 12 = Lives (Maximum = 9 or 10 = &9 or &0A) 4.8 Remember all value are in hex, so use the magic character option in !Edit’s Find. Stuart Turgis 4.8 • TwinWorld hints 4.8 − Owls in the forest can be killed by jumping up and firing. 4.8 − Similarly, on some occasions you will have to jump, but fire on the way down to hit denizens close to you. 4.8 − Jump between worlds whenever possible − if you loose a life, you’re taken back to the last time you changed worlds. 4.8 − Stamping your feet can reveal objects − either treasure or keys. 4.8 − Beware of calling the genie when you are already carrying two other sorts of objects (remember the horn is one), because you won’t be able to buy an object which you don’t already hold. 4.8 − Beware when shooting the three-headed dragon. If you don’t shoot the head furthest away from you, it flies away from you and fires an almost continuous salvo. 4.8 − Watch out for extended jump − you can sometimes use it when you don’t realise − on some screens it’s essential and you may only have a limited amount. 4.8 − Watch out for the parachute − in the last few levels I found I couldn’t get rid of it and it limited my objects to just two types. 4.8 − When firing at the bird − if you duck, it flies lower to avoid your fire. Stand until the bird is fairly close, then crouch and fire. 4.8 − When the giant clam fires at you, or the Big eye, if you run so the ‘bullet’ is off the screen it will disappear. 4.8 Impression 4.8 Hints & Tips 4.8 Bruce Goatly (BG), who is busy writing a book about using Impression, very kindly sent us some hints & tips (in return for permission to use our H&T in his book!). Most of the rest of the H&T are from the editor’s experiences with the unreleased version 2.09. (Version 2.10 is not ready for release so 2.05 is still the latest officially available version.) 4.8 • Abbreviation expansion − Use it to correct common spelling errors or to enforce house style (I often type ‘ans’ for ‘and’ and ‘thw’ for ‘the’, and the house style for my book is ‘disk’ whereas I almost always spell it ‘disc’). BG. 4.8 • Date and time format − As I continually forget what day it is, I use the Insert date option quite a lot. If you want to change the format of the date (the default is in the form 6th April 1991), load the !Run file into Edit and alter the definition of the variable Impression$DateFormat (see pp. 337-339 of the User Guide, on using system variables). Similarly, you can alter the time format by editing Impression$TimeFormat. BG. 4.8 • Dongle connection problems − If you are having problems with a dongle that keeps saying it is not present and you find that you need to wiggle it (just a little bit!) to recognise its presence, go back and read the hint above about ‘Connection problems’. Alternatively, CC themselves offer a hint about it. They say that it is important to quit properly from Impression and not just do a <ctrl-break>, otherwise the dongle might need to be left for a couple of hours for a capacitor to discharge before Impression can be loaded again. 4.8 • Line spacing and font changes − If a line in the middle of a paragraph starts with a different font from the lines around it, the line spacing may be upset for that one line because of the way Impression does its calculations. The way round it is to put the cursor at the start of the offending line, cancel the font change at that point and insert a ‘null’ character (such as Alt-131). This will be invisible but will correct the line spacing. BG. 4.8 • Loading text files − If you want to load a text file into Impression, there is no need to create a new document first − just drag the Edit file onto the Impression icon and it will set up an untitled document and load the text into a null frame. 4.8 • Marking a single character − If you are doing DTP in a lower resolu tion screen mode, you may be finding it difficult to use the mouse to drag-mark a single character e.g. the ‘l’ in ‘will’. One way of doing it is to move the cursor between two of the characters, click <select> but firmly hold the mouse in place. Then you use the cursor left or right, as appropriate, to move the cursor to the other side of the character to be marked and finally press <adjust>. George Foot, Oxted. 4.8 My method of doing any of this kind of detailed work is to have two windows open on the same document − which is extremely easy to do (another advantage over PageMaker!) − one shows the full page and one just an enlarged section of the text. Then you can flick backwards and forwards between the two views enlarging and contracting the windows or simply pushing them to the back when they are not wanted. 4.8 (However, have you noticed that Impression sometimes insists on going back to the beginning of the document when you expand and contract the window using the size switch icon in the top right hand corner of the window? Has anyone worked out why it happens and, more importantly, how to stop it?) 4.8 • Special characters − The list in Appendix 5 of the Impression II manual gives a printout of all the characters. This is useful, but there is some variation from one typeface to another, so it would be useful to have an Impression file of it so that you could print it out in your particular typeface. I’ll put a file of it on the monthly program disc, but if you want to do it yourself, you can run the following program and put the text into a multi-column Impression document. 4.8 10 REM > CHARLISTER 4.8 20 *SPOOL CHARS 4.8 30 @%=2 4.8 40 FOR N% = 32 TO 255 4.8 50 PRINT N%;CHR$(9); 4.8 “{”“heading”“on }{” ;CHR$(N%); “}” 4.8 60 NEXT 4.8 70 *SPOOL 4.8 • Spell-checking − Not really a hint, but I was using the spelling checker and it offered me the word “faltness” and told me that “flatness” was wrongly spelled. Also, while spell-checking, someone had written “Beebugs’ policy”. The spelling checker knows Beebug but can you guess what it offered me as an alternative for the accidental plural? Yes, that’s right, “Bedbugs”! On the same theme, I spell-checked my Factfile and came up with Motley Electronics, Mike Leecher of EMU Ltd, ARM3’s from Aloof One and IDLE drives from Ian Copycats. Then I tried some of our contributors and found Brain Cowman, Dim Parkland and last, but not least, Pall Beggarly. 4.8 • Tickets please! − (The following saga gives, firstly, an unnecessarily long method of doing a job but one which illustrates techniques which might prove useful in other circumstances. It is followed by the easier, smarter method!) I wanted to make some numbered tickets at A6 size so I made up an A4 page with four copies of the ticket. I used a two column master page so that I could just take a copy of the text on the page and paste it 14 times to make my 60 tickets. Near the bottom of each ticket, it said, “Ticket number: ” with an appropriate blank space. Then I created four guide frames on the master page at about the right place to put in the ticket numbers and inserted four new frames on each page. I then went through linking all the frames together. To create the text for the numbers, I used PipeDream using the “row” command and copying it down 60 rows. I then “saved” this in tab format straight into the first ticket number frame and, instantly, all the tickets were numbered. Brilliant! The only real hassle was lining up the ticket number boxes with the words on the ticket. The problem is that although you can have both the text and the master page on screen at the same time and at the same magnification (which helps), the main page is not updated until the master page is closed so I changed the “preferences” to make the master page come up at the right magnification. 4.8 (A similar technique of linked frames is used for the running heads on the magazine − i.e. the articles’ names at top outside corners of the pages. The dummy Archive, before articles are inserted, has a whole string of 60 “X”s, one on each page, alternately left and right aligned. Then, when an article has been inserted, the running heads are altered using selective search and replace to change, for example, “X” into “Hints & Tips”. This is easier than using copy and paste because it preserves the left and right alignment. But I digress... let me get back to the tickets...) 4.8 Then I suddenly realised the easy way of doing it.... Create the ticket at full A4 size on the master page using “Ticket number: ” and then inserting the page number. (Use <menu> − Misc − Insert − Current page number − Numeric.) Then, all you do is to add 59 pages (click on “Insert new page” with <adjust>, not <select> so that the menu option stays on the screen) and use “Fit lots” on the “Print” dialogue box reducing the scale to 50%. If you find that it still says, “Fit lots (1)” at 50% and you have to go down to about 48% before it goes to (4), click on “Setup...” and select the option to “Ignore page boundary”. If you don’t do this but print out at 48%, you will find that the margins are unequal. This is a much quicker way of doing it than the previous method and also gives the possibility of deciding that you want the tickets smaller after all so you just reduce the scale and, perhaps, change to sideways printing. 4.8 • Widows & orphans − This is the technical term for where you get a paragraph split so that a single line is on one page (or column) and the rest is on the previous or next. If the first line is split off from the rest, the solution is fairly obvious − use <ctrl-G> at the beginning of the paragraph to push the line onto the next column. The odd line at the end of a paragraph is less easy. If the text is left justified, you can again use <ctrl-G> to push one more line to the next column to join the lonely orphan. However, if you subsequently edit the paragraph so that the layout of the lines changes, you have to edit out the <ctrl-G>. Also, this doesn’t work at all if you are using full justification because the <ctrl-G> causes the justification on the last line of the column to be lost and it looks like the end of a paragraph without a full stop. The only solution I can find is to create a new frame with <ctrl-I> and lay it over the last line of the column. This forces that line over to the next column without losing the justification. 4.8 SCSI Hints & Tips 4.8 • Removable drive problems − We are beginning to understand more about the problems with removable drives. Let me explain... SCSI drives are intelligent and they keep their own record of any duff sectors. However, this record is not available to the user. If you tell the computer to “format” the disc, it deliberately ignores any sectors it already knows are duff. If you get a “soft error” i.e. where the data gets corrupted so that the CRC check shows up an error, reformatting will clear the problem. However, if the disc surface is actually damaged, it may be that reformatting clears the problem temporarily but, with time, the problem may reappear and you will get the dreaded “Disc error 10 at... ” or whatever. The solution to this is to use the *DEFECT command provided by RISC-OS. If you get an error, *VERIFY the disc, note the addresses which are thrown up as either suspect or actually having a disc error, say, 7CEC00, 7CEE00 and 7CF000 and then type in 4.8 *DEFECT SCSI::5 7CEC00 4.8 *DEFECT SCSI::5 7CEE00 4.8 *DEFECT SCSI::5 7CF000 4.8 where SCSI::5 is the drive definition. It is worth recording these addresses in case you need to format the disc again in the future. You then need to enter the *DEFECT commands again. If *DEFECT finds that you are trying to map out a sector that is allocated to a file or directory, it will tell you so, in which case, you will have to copy the file or directory and delete the one which it says is in the way. 4.8 Obviously, it is better if you can avoid getting hard errors in the first place so, just as a reminder, (1) always dismount the drive properly before switching off the power and (2) keep your drive cool by not packing other hardware around it. 4.8 • Removable drive problems (Part 2) − Surely there can’t be any MORE problems with the removable drives − they really won’t be worth selling. Yes, there are more problems but, yes, I still think they are worth selling. If you try to use the MR45’s or the Atomwide equivalent on an Acorn SCSI podule or on a TechnoSCSI (I have not tried any others), you will find that occasionally they just hang up − usually when copying a sequence of files. It is a timing problem which Acorn say they will look into but they are not too optimistic. They say that Syquest, who make the drive mechanisms, have interpreted the SCSI standards in a different way from other drive manufacturers. The Acorn engineers have tried to modify their software to accommodate Syquest’s idiosyncrasies but although they have managed to make a version of their software that will work when copying lots of files, they find that it does not format the cartridges properly! It is not beyond the bounds of possibility to get SCSI software to work on the Syquest drives − both Oak and Lingenuity have done it successfully but, as yet, there is no satisfactory way of running them on Acorn or TechnoSCSI cards. 4.8 I should say to A540 owners, that, although I am using a Syquest removable drive on my A540, I am doing so on an Oak podule. I made the change (before I realised there was any problem) purely on the basis that (1) the Oak software is the easiest to use on the MR45’s because of the ease of dismounting and re-mounting discs and (2) it is the fastest that I have tried. (I have not yet tried the offerings from HCCS or The Serial Port but unless they have specifically tailored their software for the Syquest mechanisms, I doubt that they will work.) 4.8 • SCSI land speed record − Oak are claiming an Archimedes drive speed record. Their 300M HS drive, on an A440 with a 20MHz ARM3, runs at 1939 / 1761 / 1043 Kbytes/sec in modes 0, 15 and 21 respectively. Can anyone beat that? A 4.8 4.8 Oak 4.8 From 4.7 page 19 4.8 4.8 Help!!!! 4.8 • Beginners articles − We’re still getting requests for more articles for beginners. We’d love to oblige but such articles are more difficult to write and, possibly, less interesting for the writer. Since all the articles are offered freely by members of Archive, that may explain the dearth of such articles. If anyone feels they could rectify this deficiency, do get in touch with us. Thanks. Ed. 4.8 • Broken directory − Can anyone help me please? I need to retrieve a small file off a disc with a “broken directory”. Please contact Peter Baxter on 0772-651616 (day) 0524-701543 (evening) to discuss terms etc. 4.8 • Hi-res printouts − Would anybody be able to help by doing some printouts of Draw files on a Laser Direct Hi-res? For money? David Turner, London SW6. 4.8 • Integrex paper − Does anyone know of a supplier of good quality paper for Integrex colour printers? Brian Hunter, Macclesfield. 4.8 • IOC memory mapping − On page 110 of the PRM’s is the memory mapping of the IOC. Can anyone in the know reveal enough information to allow the use of the free timers? i.e. the latch and go commands etc. Jonathan Heher, S. Africa. 4.8 • Impression printing − Does anyone know of a firm that will output my Impression documents on a Linotype typesetting machine, preferably without converting it first into MS-DOS format? Christine Shield, Stocksfield. 4.8 • Print bureau? Does any known of any printers in the Manchester area who can print from an Archimedes Impression disc? Contact Torben Steeg at 92 Shrewsbury Street, Old Trafford, Manchester, M16 9AU or telephone 061-225-9706. (Or indeed, anywhere in the country! We’ll publish a list of any that you send us. Any help on this subject will be appreciated by many. Ed.) 4.8 Help offered 4.8 • Dynamic mouse resolution − In answer to Jochen Konietzko’s query in Archive 4.7 p60, Risc User published just such a program in volume 4, issue 1. A 4.8 4.8 Lindis 4.8 From 4.6 page 16 4.8 4.8 Comment Column 4.8 • Alan Highet replies − I would like to reply to Daniel Tamberg who feels aggrieved by my review of Starfleet Encounter. 4.8 He must realise that the review was, like all reviews, only my own personal views and other people must make up their own mind by trying to read all the reviews available and speaking to other people who own the game. 4.8 Let me deal with his points one by one. He says that it would be very difficult to implement a computer opponent but surely that is a programming challenge which he took on when he decided to write the program. I have tried to write some simple programs myself and agree that the computer opponent is the most difficult part but I wouldn’t release it until I’d mastered it. 4.8 As to it being a board game with the computer as a referee, that is what I think it should have been but there is no board. I have played a few wargames and think a computerised referee would be a good idea but I wouldn’t dream of trying to transfer the whole game to computer as that would ruin it. 4.8 Daniel says that you can pre-program macros prior to the game starting which is true of general moves but as the game progresses you need to be able to alter your plans and this would mean pre-planning a huge number of macros making the game play unwieldy. Imagine trying to pre-judge all the moves in a chess game and chess players do not have more than one piece moving at any one time. 4.8 Daniel admits that the programming of the ships is very difficult and to stick to the simple moves but what’s the point of having all the other features if not to use them. I admit that I was a bit harsh by saying simultaneous use of the keyboard by two players doesn’t work but Daniel admits it’s not ideal and I certainly don’t like the contortions I have to go through for two people to gain access. 4.8 I reiterate my first point about this being a personal view but I still think releasing the game into the Public Domain or as Shareware would be Daniel’s best bet and with the feedback, the game could be enhanced greatly. As I said in the review, I think the programming is very good and I hope he continues with some more games which I will look forward to. 4.8 • Minerva’s Timetabler − Has anyone managed to use Timetabler to create a complete timetable? I have tried it on a small section of a secondary school timetable which I had previously created manually so I know it is possible to timetable. The Minerva program does not create a fully working timetable automatically − I was left with a number of parts to try to fit manually. 4.8 I must say that once the elements are created, e.g. room designations, staff and subject details, the program is reasonably straightforward and potentially extremely valuable. I can also see that the time saving for next year would be tremendous as the room details etc would not have to be re-entered. However, unless it can create a fully working timetable, it is not really very useful. 4.8 The program also does not seem to have followed the Acorn rules about windows. You can only have one window open at a time − as soon as you open one window, the current one closes. Peter Blenkinsop, Watford. 4.8 • Ovation versus Impression − Aren’t you taunting Risc User a little too much? After all, Ovation is really “Ovation 1” and it surely compares well with “Impression 1”. I have both Ovation and Impression II and always use the latter! I don’t know what that says, but Ovation really is a good program and it does have some features lacking in Impression (and vice versa, of course). Both Beebug and CC are working on bigger and better DTP programs and it will be interesting to see the next generation of programs. By the way, I don’t like the protection system used by Beebug and much prefer a dongle. John Jordan. 4.8 • Ovation for Risc User? − Mike Williams, Risc User’s editor writes... From your recent editorials, it might be thought that you had some vested interest in Computer Concepts’ Impression II. And that from a magazine which we all thought was independent! At the moment we don’t happen to use Ovation for originating Risc User, though some of the advertising copy is produced in this way, but then neither does it seem very sensible to throw away all our Apple Macintoshes (purchased some years ago at a not inconsiderable sum of money), and bear the cost of purchasing replacement Archimedes systems. We thus keep costs down and make the most efficient use of our resources, all of which has nothing to do with the ability of Ovation or any other Archimedes based DTP package to do the same job. 4.8 In fact, Ovation is widely used within Beebug for many tasks. All of the Company’s manuals are produced using Ovation, our book ‘File Handling for All’ (reviewed in Archive 4.7) was entirely typeset using Ovation, and it is routinely used by both technical and non-technical staff for a variety of purposes. 4.8 We feel that our job is to produce the best possible magazine for Archimedes users. We make the best use of the tools available to us, and we try to be sensible and economical in the use of our resources. We may not use Ovation, yet, but neither do we use Impression. End of Argument. 4.8 Archive Editor replies... No, we don’t have any vested interest in Computer Concepts, though we did get a complimentary copy of Impression to use for the magazine. We made an independent decision about which was the best DTP to use for producing our magazine − this was based on advice from various different independent people “in the know”. What can we say now, in the light of our experience? Well, not having used Ovation, we cannot give a fair comparison between that and Impression (but see the comment above) but we can make a fair comparison between Impression on the Archimedes and PageMaker on the Macintosh. As a result of that, my advice to Risc User would be that it is SO much easier to produce an Archimedes magazine on Impression that, in the long run, they would save money by selling their Macs, buying an A540 (which they get at dealer prices, of course) and using Impression − I’m sure Charles Moir would give them a complementary copy, too. 4.8 • Powerband from 4th Dimension − I was surprised with the review of Powerband (4th Dimension) in Archive 4.7. I found it very disappointing and not up to the standards of Apocalypse (also by G. Key). I know reviews are ultimately subjective and influenced by the reviewer’s experiences and expectations, but here are the comments I made about it in a review I sent to Arcade BBS on the 14th January, 1991. It was written before the second version of Powerband was released but my views have not changed since. 4.8 I have been waiting for a decent driving/racing simulation for quite a while, (to ween me off Revs) and when Powerband was rumored to have been released, I rang 4th D and ordered it. My final evaluation of it is that it does not approach the realism of Revs. No other micro-based simula tion has, apart from ‘Power Drifter’, which gave the same sort of “gut- wrenching” feeling when you go over a hill at speed. Another disappoint ment is that there are no pits to change tyres, refuel, repair damage... Variable weather might be nice as well. However, the most serious deficiency of the game is that the racing is unrealistic; you can be going flat-out at, say, 242 mph around a gentle curving bend and another car comes hurtling past you about 50-60 mph faster − a bit improbable. Also, during the World Championships, the same drivers get the same positions in every race (mind you I’ve only done nine races so far). Powerband is a lot better than his last effort, E-Type, so perhaps G.Keys’ next driving game could carry on where Revs left off, about 6 years ago on an 8 bit 6502... Chun Wong, Sheffield. 4.8 • Schema − I was interested in the comments on Schema in the last comment column. 4.8 I too have had a try at Schema and found it a great disappointment. Having tried other spreadsheets in the past, I was expecting great things. On the surface it looked fine but, when I tried to use it, I did not find it at all intuitive. 4.8 There were a number of irritations: (a) It does not support the ^ function for raising to the power. The exponenial function, I find clumsy. (b) There are no function keys for insert/delete columns or rows. Using the mouse, I found irksome due to the number of menus options. (c) Far too many menu options, which makes it difficult to remember which menu option to use. (d) To insert a column to the far left of the sheet requires adding a column to the right of column A and copying A to B. Very untidy. (e) Schema cannot tell the difference between text and numbers/formulae. Text has to be given quotation marks. Most spreadsheets are far more intelligent than this. (f) Before entering anything into the scratchpad, the cursor must be placed over the required box and you can not move to another box after entering your text in the scratchpad. 4.8 These are just some of the niggles I found and I will certainly not be buying this product. 4.8 Come on Computer Concepts, let’s have a spreadsheet that links to your superb Impression and Equasor. Eddie Lord, Crawley. A 4.8 4.8 Matters Arising 4.8 • Archimedes viruses − We have received the following statement from the Computer Crimes Unit in London... “Thankfully the Archimedes’ youth and overall responsibility of its users has ensured that very few Archimedes viruses have been distributed. However, if the problem is going to be tackled, it should be attempted early. Hence, anyone who has been afflicted by a virus should send full written details and, if possible, a disc containing an isolated copy of any files that have been affected. Please clearly mark this disc − Archimedes Virus. 4.8 All suspect files should be in a directory called ‘Infection’ and should have their file types set to Text (FFF). Any other details, such as when the infection took place (Date Stamp) or even the source of the infection may help the Police at the Crime Unit to identify the virus writer. Release of a virus is now illegal (Computer Misuse Act, 1990). 4.8 Any other comments or information which could lead to the identification of a virus writer will also be appreciated. You may reserve the right to remain anonymous. 4.8 Please send all discs marked ‘Archimedes Virus’ to: The Computer Crimes Unit, 2 Richbell Place, London, WC1 8XD.“ Clive Gringas & Warren Burch 4.8 • ‘Co-Routines in C’ errata (Archive 4.6 p 23) − The text immediately after each left curly bracket “{‘coroutines in C’ disappeared in the print. Here is a list of affected structures and missing text: 4.8 typedef {okay!!! 4.8 input {{ printf(“input 4.8 output {{ int 4.8 while {{ if 4.8 if {okay!!! 4.8 co_start {{ int 4.8 if 4.8 When text is imported into Impression, the text following a “{automatically stripped out. This is because Impression commands are enclosed in curly brackets. Cy Booker has kindly sent us an application which will convert C listings to text suitable to import into Impression II v2.05. This has been put on this month’s magazine disc. Ed 4.8 • Fan quieteners − Paul Skirrow had a fan quietener from Ray Maidstone for review. Unfortunately, he found that it wouldn’t fit properly into his computer. There wasn’t enough space next to the hard disc drive to get it in. On investigation, it was found that he had one of Watford Electronics’ “free” hard discs − buy a 410 and you get it upgraded “free” to 2M and a 20M drive. Unfortunately these “free” drives are rather bigger than normal. Secondly, Paul found that even if he disconnected the fan all together, it didn’t make much difference to the noise level because the “free” disc was so noisy. Paul therefore returned the fan quietener as he did not feel that he could give it a fair review. 4.8 As a result of this experience, Ray has modified the fan quieteners so that they do fit with these extra-large drives. He also found that they are not all as noisy as Paul’s drive so it may still be worth using a fan quietener even if you have got a Watford “free” hard drive. 4.8 • HawkV9 Utilities − The HawkV9 utilities mentioned in the Help Offered section of Archive 4.7 p 60 are in fact HawkV10 utilities, the latter being monochrome not colour. Apologies to Claus Birkner, the author, for the mistake. 4.8 • HP DeskJet 500 with FWP − On this month’s magazine disc there are two First Word Plus printer drivers for the HP DeskJet 500. One uses the CG Times font and the other Letter Gothic. Thanks to Dave Morrell who sent them in. A 4.8 4.8 Competition Corner 4.8 Colin Singleton 4.8 Another classic problem this month. In 1779 Leonard Euler proposed his Officers Problem: 4.8 Thirty-six officers, of six different ranks and from six different regiments, one of each rank from each regiment, are to form a square on the parade ground such that each row and each file contains just one officer of each rank and just one from each regiment. 4.8 Do not waste time on this one, there is no solution. Euler conjectured that there is no solution for any oddly-even order, i.e. 2, 6, 10, 14 etc. 4.8 The order ten problem, however, was solved in 1959, barely into the computer age. This, then, is your problem. Can Archimedes solve this problem in less than 180 years? If so, how long does your program take to find a solution? If no correct solution is received, the prize will go to the one with the fewest errors (repetitions in a row or column). 4.8 To re-phrase the problem, place the two-digit numbers 00 to 99 in a ten- by-ten grid so that no first digit occurs twice in any row or column, nor does any second digit. 4.8 Solutions, and comments, either to N.C.S. or to me at 41 St Quentin Drive, Sheffield S17 4PN. 4.8 Winners 4.8 Now, as promised, the winner of the December competition, which was to find numbers which can be multiplied by an integer simply by a cyclic rotation of their digits. You were asked to find the smallest such number for each multiple, e.g. 076923 * 3 = 230769. 4.8 The winner is Joseph Seelig, of North Harrow, whose program has investigated multiples up to at least 80000. It is good to see a new name on the trophy. Joseph’s spooled disc does not list a solution for 1757 but that is because he set a limit on the length of numbers to be investigated. Given more time, his program (without modification) could have found a solution. No contestant offered a solution for 1757. 4.8 Readers may be interested in the techniques used by the winners of this and future competitions, so I will do my best to oblige. From the coding of Joseph’s program, his technique appears to be essentially the same as mine, although his coding is neater. 4.8 I proved that the solution for a given multiple must be the first cycle of the recurring decimal representation of the reciprocal of some integer or, to put it another way, it must be a factor of some number consisting of all nines. In the example above 1/13 = 0.076923 recurring, and 13 * 076923 = 999999. 4.8 At least one contestant missed several solutions by considering only the reciprocals of primes. Any number ending in 1, 3, 7 or 9 has a recurring decimal reciprocal and must be considered. 4.8 All the cyclic rotations of such a number are multiples of it. Thus 769230, 692307, 923076, 230769 and 307692 are 076923 multiplied by 10, 9, 12, 3 and 4 respectively. 4.8 The numbers involved can be very large but multi-length arithmetic is not needed. The sequence of multiples can be derived quite simply. If the multiple, M is initially set to 1 and R is the reciprocal (13 in my example), then successive multiples can be calculated by repetitive use of the expression M = 10*M MOD R, until M returns to 1. The number of repetitions indicates the length of the number. 4.8 The programming technique requires a list in memory (initially empty) of the best solution found so far for each multiple. For ever-increasing values of R, calculate the sequence of multiples for each R and check whether this R provides a better solution than that already found (if any) for each multiple. You need to remember the length of the solution for each multiple as well as the value of R. 4.8 This does not guarantee to find the smallest solution for a given multiple, since a higher value of R might give a shorter solution. 4.8 To be able to print the best solution (to date) for a given multiple, it is necessary to hold the list of values of R on a file. The actual solution (the reciprocal of R) can be generated by initially setting X to 10 and repeating the calculation X = (X MOD R) * 10 until X returns to 10. At each stage print the value of X DIV R, which will be a single digit. 4.8 Incidentally, the best solution I have found for 1757 is derived from R = 2377 and has 264 digits. It is... 4.8 0004206983592763988220445940260832982751 3672696676482961716449305847707193941943 6264198569625578460244005048380311316785 8645351283129995793016407236011779554059 7391670172486327303323517038283550694152 2928060580563735801430374421539755994951 619688683214135464871687 A 4.8 4.8 ArcScan III 4.8 Eric Ayers 4.8 Eric, who very kindly prepares the Arcscan data for Archive magazine month by month now has a copy of the latest version of Arcscan and gives us his comments.... 4.8 Beebug’s ArcScan II is an easy-to-use system for quick retrieval of magazine articles and other reference material, and is supplied complete with index files for Beebug, Risc User and Acorn Manuals. It is simple to adapt the system for other data: for example, I have all my computer programs, with brief access and operating instructions, indexed on it. Archive magazine and disc indexes are available in this format on the Shareware 7 disc, and are updated regularly on the Monthly discs. 4.8 A new version − ArcScan III (v.0.5) − has just been issued. It is compatible with files created on the earlier version and the ‘free’ files supplied have been extended to include the ANSI C Manual, and both versions of the Acorn User Guide. There is a half-promise to make available (to Beebug members ?) indexes for Micro User and Acorn User journals right from issue 1. So what are the main differences in the program itself? 4.8 The presentation has been completely changed: it now multi-tasks, with normal WIMP scrolling windows, menus and icons, and standard wildcard conventions. An excellent HELP facility is available from the icon bar menu. The limitation to 25 lines per record, imposed by the previous fixed window format, is removed. This was a real limitation with some of the more ambitious Shareware discs! It is possible to specify the database to be loaded on start-up. The requirement for magazine issue and volume files to be consecutive has been lifted. A NOT option has been added to the search logic. 4.8 The icon bar menu now offers three ‘turn-off’ options: CLOSE removes windows only, CLEAR also removes the resident database, while QUIT removes everything. At all stages, unwanted memory is automatically returned to the system pool. The PRINT option also appears now on this menu, and it is here I have my first niggle. 4.8 If you happen to search for a string that appears 350 times in the file, and then click on PRINT, you have the option of sweating it out or pressing <reset> − nothing less will stop it. This makes nonsense of multi-tasking, which is suspended during printing, and a <reset> loses everything. One thing must be included in v.0.6 − a scan for the escape condition to abort printing immediately. Also highly desirable would be the facility to scroll and size the screen window and print out just its contents, without the 9 extra lines of header information − in other words, mouse-controlled selective printing. 4.8 Finally, I cannot resist a verbatim quote from the copyright notice in the ReadMe file:“... the data for all Acorn indexes in this database carries a joint copyright. It must not be copied or used in any way without permission...” (My italics). Pity! − I did so want to use it to look up SWI Wimp_Poll. Seriously though, ArcScan is an excellent product. It scores over more complex databases by being tailor-made for the particular job it does well. But, please, Dr Calcraft, will you get something done about that PRINT option! 4.8 (I use Arcscan a lot to access material from back issues of Archive and find it very effective. The only MAJOR drawback from my point of view is the lack of use of RISC-OS printer drivers. If you don’t happen to use a simple parallel or serial printer, tough! However, there is a way of doing it. You can spool it to file and then load the spooled file into !Edit or Impression, say, and then print out using the RISC-OS driver. *Spool does not work for this, but it can be done by using 4.8 *SET PrinterType$5 RAM:filename (or whatever filesystem or filename you want to use) and then *FX5,5. Ed.) A 4.8 4.8 Language Column 4.8 David Wild 4.8 Since I wrote the last language column, I have had a letter from Mr T P Rowledge, of Winchester, who feels that I was a little dismissive of Smalltalk when I talked about the “cut-down” version. I am sorry to have given that impression but it really was the only version which I had seen mentioned in the magazines. Mr Rowledge, who ported both Little Smalltalk, the “cut-down” version, and Smalltalk-80 to the Archimedes tells me that the main version is now available from Smalltalk Express Ltd, although he doesn’t say how much it is. 4.8 I am delighted to hear that the system is now available for the Archimedes and hope that a review will soon be appearing in Archive. One thing that I would like to say, however, is that we must start thinking in terms of the benefits to be had by using software of any type rather than just the advantages to the programmer. I see the difference between benefits and advantages as being that benefits are “cashable”, and can be included in a proposal to the boss, while advantages are those things which affect our preferences once the benefits have been established. 4.8 Perhaps one way of seeing this difference is to look at some of the excellent software offered by the Data Store at Bromley. Several of their utility programs sit on the icon bar of my machine all the time but, although they make life easier, it would not be true to say that I would be severely handicapped if I didn’t have them. These programs have advantages but I could always use the command line to do the same job if someone took them away. !FontFX, on the other hand, does a job which I certainly couldn’t do for myself and enables me to produce better- looking newsletters (not related to computers) which would justify a higher price if I were not the honorary editor. It is reasonable to claim this as a benefit as the improved appearance is noticed by people who have no interest in my computing tasks. 4.8 There is no question of the utility programs being in any way inferior but it is the programs like !FontFX which will increase the appeal of the Archimedes and so lead to wider use of the system. 4.8 Charm 4.8 In the March issue of Archive, I mentioned the new, at least for the Archimedes, language called Charm which was sent to me by Peter Nowosad. The idea of the language is to provide a fast, easily compiled, language which will work on a single floppy 1mb machine. It is block-structured like Pascal and ‘C’ and incorporates many similarities with both of them. 4.8 The compiler itself generates assembly language statements which are then run through an assembler before being linked with libraries to form the final executable program. Several example programs are included in the package, including a fully multi-tasking version of Chinese Checkers which runs in its own window after sitting on the icon bar. The only fault I can find with this program, which takes up 1500 lines of source code, is that it wipes the floor with me before I have managed to work out what is going on. There is also another game, this time not multi- tasking, in which two serpents, controlled by the program, hunt another snake controlled by the programmer. The graphics are excellent, especially in view of the relatively small amount of program code. 4.8 An editor, compiler, assembler (which can be used independently) and linker all come as part of the package which will be marketed by David Pilling at £5.99. 4.8 The one major criticism which I had of the package so far is to do with the documentation. Peter is a computer enthusiast who has ported the language from a 68000 development machine and the instruction manual is really addressed to other computer enthusiasts rather than typical users. When this has been tackled, Charm should be a means of writing some very powerful packages for the Archimedes. With a new language like this, the author’s documentation is vital as there is nowhere else that users can go for help. Later, when a language becomes accepted, textbooks start to appear and the “local” documentation becomes much less important. 4.8 The problem is, of course, not just confined to the Archimedes and to languages. Many of the PC programs which I use at work are very badly documented. I recently upgraded my scanner, which I bought from Technomatic, and with the package comes a new manual. The first chapter of this is devoted to installing the board; a task which, with luck, I will never do again. I feel that this sort of information should be in an appendix; as it happens, I am the only person who uses my machine but in a busy office many people may need to look at the manual and they don’t need installation information. 4.8 My suggestion is that a language manual should start with a simple program, slightly more elaborate than the classic “Hello World”, and there should be full explanations about why the programming rules are there. When this has been dealt with it would be appropriate to go on to using the compiler, assembler and linker. In the case of a language with its own editor, like Charm, editing instructions can be mixed in with the programming part but the rest can wait. Technical descriptions should be in an appendix unless they actually affect the use of the program. 4.8 Scheme 4.8 I have received a note from the distributor of Scheme telling me that version 4 of the language is well into the planning stage. This will include full RISC-OS compatibility, the ability to manipulate very big numbers, vectors and structures as primitive data objects, additional macro facilities and structure building and syntax checking in the editor. There is also to be a new edition of the handbook with more examples and two-colour printing. 4.8 Together with the language itself there will be example programs and utilities including packages for linear algebra, polynomials, numerical methods of integration and approximation and several tasks to do with group theory. 4.8 I don’t know yet when the package will be available but I will put something in this column as soon as I have more information. With the extras package, it should certainly deserve a place in the sixth form maths class. A 4.8 4.8 Credit where it’s due 4.8 • Lingenuity − Thanks are due to Lingenuity for their help to Ellen Wilkinson High School. We ordered a piece of advertised software and needed delivery before a cut-off date when the money would have been “lost”. Lingenuity had with-drawn the software but they supplied an alternative, considerably more expensive, piece of software at the price of the original software we ordered. Mike Battersby, Northolt. A 4.8 4.8 Atomwide 4.8 From 4.7 page 8 4.8 4.8 Analogue Measurement on the A3000 4.8 Peter Thomson 4.8 The BBC-B computer provided many enthusiasts in schools and universities with an excellent introduction to measurement and control. The A3000 offers many advantages. Although the standard machine does not include the analogue port, it is an inexpensive addition. HCCS sell a user/ analogue port expansion for £44 +VAT and Morley sell a user/analogue port + I2C for £69+VAT. 4.8 Both are well made boards and can be fitted without any real difficulty, simply plugging into the expansion sockets toward the rear and left of the main circuit board. No other changes are needed. 4.8 The analogue port can be controlled from BASIC in exactly the same way as on the BBC-B. The HCCS board has a slight problem here with one command. ADVAL 0 DIV 256 should test the analogue chip to report the most recent channel to complete conversion. This does not work on the HCCS board, but they tell me they are looking into it. This is no real problem unless you are recording values at the maximum conversion rate and want to be sure of recording each conversion once only. 4.8 The conversion rate is twice that of the BBC-B, at 5ms per channel. Here, the advantage of using the A3000 becomes clear. The BBC-B could only cope with a 10ms conversion per channel using machine code routines to collect, display and store the data. The A3000 can run a routine in BASIC to collect, display and store data at 5ms intervals with time to spare. The routine has to be slowed down because it can complete this loop at 1ms intervals, recording the same value several times before the next conversion. 4.8 My collection of sensors developed for the BBC-B analogue port plugged into these expansion boards on the A3000 and worked without any problems. I use a home made protection for the analogue port that uses resistors and diodes, based on the design by Dr John Martin of Salford University and again this works without any need to make changes. 4.8 My data-logging software for the BBC-B used machine code routines to increase the speed of data handling and program overlays to provide a series of menu options while leaving a reasonable amount of memory for data storage. The A3000 renders most of these memory conserving tricks obsolete. All the software will fit together with a vast data store. This greatly simplifies the programming. 4.8 Excellent value for money 4.8 For any enthusiast, or for any school where data-logging is part of the core curriculum for every child, I would recommend the A3000 + either analogue port. 4.8 Sensors 4.8 I think that the greatest educational value is gained by producing your own sensors. Light dependent resistors, thermistors etc are standard components in school science laboratories. A simple potential divider using Vref and ground with the output to an analogue input on the port makes a simple and effective sensor. For those who wish to purchase ready made sensors, there is a wide range now available from all laboratory suppliers. 4.8 Measure-It from RESOURCE 4.8 This pack contains an interface to the analogue port, two temperature sensors, one light sensor, a switch on a lead and data-logging software. It costs £64.50 +VAT. The analogue port must be fitted before this package can be used. No problems were found with the use of this package with either of the analogue boards. 4.8 The interface to the analogue port is robustly made inside a small metal case. It should protect the computer from any accidental misconnections of sensors. The sensors supplied all connect to this box with 5 pin DIN plugs, again this should prevent misconnections. The sensors are each supplied with 1m of cable. They should stand up well to school use. 4.8 The temperature sensors are precalibrated by the software and are accurate to within one degree celsius, suitable for temperatures up to 100°C. The light probe is an L.D.R., suitable for room lighting but producing a value too high for the converter in daylight. This is a fault of the amplifier in the circuit in the Measure-It box, rather than the sensor. Unfortunately there is no provision to adjust the output signal. 4.8 Other sensors can be purchased. The instruction booklet also describes how to connect your own sensors to the interface box. 4.8 Toolkit 4.8 The software runs under RISC-OS and uses RISC-OS printer drivers. It leaves other applications intact but not accessible while it is running. The menus do not use standard RISC-OS display formats or selection methods. It is important to read the readme file on disc as the guide book describes an earlier version of the software. 4.8 The first menu set offers a choice of thermometer display, temperature/ time graphs, measurement of a time interval, event counting and general data logging. 4.8 The screen display of thermometers with a bar to show the temperature and large characters is excellent, clearly visible from the back of a large room. The graph displays are not so visible. 4.8 General data logging only makes use of three channels, I found this a major omission. I did not like the system of setting time intervals which offers a limited choice of preset times. Readings could be taken at 2 second intervals but not at 4 second intervals, and no high speed readings are available. 4.8 The event counting counts twice for each push of the switch, once for on and once for off. I would have liked an option to count on the rising signal only to count from my geiger-teller unit. 4.8 The second menu offers a larger range of options, mostly for specific experiments for which extra hardware is needed such as pendulum motion and pH measurement. 4.8 Facilities to review recorded data seem to be limited. Some recording options permit the graph to be re-drawn to display a small section in more detail but other options do not allow this. Other facilities that I thought lacking were the ability to calibrate my own sensors and to transfer the data to other software packages. 4.8 Conclusion 4.8 Measure-It from RESOURCE is a good low cost introduction to data-logging on the A3000. For younger pupils it is excellent but the software is rather limited for GCSE or A level work. A 4.8 4.8 Contact Box 4.8 • Australian users − UK Archimedes user emigrating to Australia in July, hoping to settle near Adelaide would like to hear from any other users in the area. Please write to Ewart Jones, c/o Paul Rivett, 23 Bright Crescent, Mount Eliza, Victoria 3930. 4.8 • London area − The Club A3000 is having a second Open Day on Sunday June 23rd at Mill Hill School, NW7. For more details, contact Club A3000, 42 Michelham Down, London, N12 7JN. 4.8 • Warrington − Any Archimedes user or user groups in the area, please contact Robin Melling, 80 Severn Road, Culcheth, Warrington WA3 5EB. A 4.8 4.8 Structural Analysis − CASA 4.8 Richard Fallas 4.8 The catalogue of Archimedes software is now beginning to expand at a healthy rate with applications of a ‘specialist’ nature also becoming more numerous, but the choice in many fields is still limited. Whereas in the PC world, specialised packages related to disciplines such as Civil Engineering, Architecture and Structural Analysis abound, in the Archimedes domain they are rather thin on the ground. 4.8 Enter CASA 4.8 In Archive 3.1, I gave a brief review of Plane Draft from Vision Six Ltd which is a Structural Analysis package. CASA comes from the same stable and replaces the earlier program with the same modular options, although now pin jointed trusses and frames are combined in the same module and grids in another. Versions are available for up to 32 nodes (& 32 members, loads, etc) priced at £150 per module, and at £450 & £300 for the full Frame and Grid programs respectively. 4.8 CASA is RISCware, and the maturity of long term development is evident. The WIMP front end makes it a delight to use in most respects. Perhaps the most impressive thing is the way the GUI has been set up to act as just that: a Graphical User Interface. Input of the various data types is assisted in many instances by use of the mouse pointer supplementing key strokes. There is an important balance to be struck of course, within RISC-OS, to ensure that the ‘right’ control and input methods are available. By and large, Vision-Six have achieved this balance. Also, they are responsive to suggestions and constructive criticisms, as witnessed by the updates I have received in response to suggestions. I would expect this to continue and believe purchasers of CASA will benefit from future improvements as the program matures further. 4.8 CASA uses a split application technique; !CASA itself is the front end and is used for input, editing and also for output control once processing is complete. The same program is used for both frames and grids by a clever switch of axes (orthogonal or isometric) and I will return to this application shortly. 4.8 Processing & analysis 4.8 Processing is carried out by a separate application: !2Dframe, or !2Dgrid, as appropriate. Controls here are limited to setting load case factors, titles and number of passes for Second Order Analysis. This split technique is used in order to make operation on 1 Mbyte machine possible and it works well in practice − up to a point. During the course of my testing I upgraded (painlessly) from 1Mbyte to 4Mbyte following Stuart Bell’s positive experiences with IFEL, and it must be said that the convenience of being able to switch back and forth quickly (e.g. for tweaking faulty input) is a real boon. I am sure that the current pricing of the various A310 2/4Mbyte upgrades will enable most 1Mbyte users to grasp the full advantages of RISC-OS − after 2 years, it had become a ‘must’ for me; more essential in my view than a hard disc. 4.8 As !2Dframe (or !2Dgrid) does its work ubiquitously and quietly passes the updated data back to CASA (or saves it to disc on a 1Mbyte machine) there is little to be said about it, as long as it works. One toggles the required load cases to be combined, sets titles and factors in the writeable fields, and selects ‘Analyse’, repeating the process for each load case or combination required. I would prefer, however, to be able to set up multiple combination load case alternatives on one processing batch; so that a single print out covers all cases. During analysis, checks are carried out on the model to ensure it is soluble − error messages are very helpful here, e.g. “suspected mechanism at Node...” Careful handling of pin joints, supports and any settlements of supports is required to avoid such problems but this is common to all frame/grid analysis programs. This is, after all, a tool to be used by Engineers (and students) who have an understanding of the limitations of the process. 4.8 Correct analysis? 4.8 As to whether the analysis part works − I checked it using numerous frames and grids, previously analysed using my own and other commercial packages and found excellent correlation in all 1st order cases. CASA’s 2nd order analysis is not commonly available and is a somewhat revealing (and valuable) addition. Here a second (or more) pass is made using the deflected frame from the first pass as the starting point − convergence to a final solution will generally be rapid after say 3 passes. It could, conceivably, show up a potentially dangerous instability. This facility is, as far as I am aware, unique − certainly for software remotely near this price level. It is also a sensible extension of computer design − use the crunching power of the machine to improve confidence in the solution for no increase in input effort. By the way, analysis on the Archimedes is fast enough for any reasonable user − a slight pause gives the brain a chance to catch up! 4.8 !CASA is much more evident in operation than the analysis applications and it’s a gem. Input short cuts using the mouse are available in many operations. Also, an inbuilt database of rolled steel section sizes gives convenient access for setting up member types − unless you’re working in concrete or timber in which case you will need to calculate A & I values (and J if using grid). As mentioned above, !CASA is switch able from frame to grid input. In both cases, input and editing changes can be reflected on the screen automatically, or as required. I wonder if a 16“ or 20” screen with one of these fancy new modes would give more (useable) desktop space, as it can get a bit cluttered with umpteen windows open at once! (How about a twin screen Archimedes Acorn? − or even one that looks a bit more like my drawing board, i.e. big and flat!!) 4.8 Graphical output 4.8 Graphical output options are exceptionally well supported − deflections, loads, moments, shears, node and member labelling options − all are scalable; with hardcopy being via RISC-OS drivers. One can get somewhat confused with all the menus and options, however, and there is quite a lot to master. I have queried the load case separation with VisionSix and they have introduced colour coding to help with this. 4.8 Textual output goes straight to the printer but graphical output requires the appropriate driver to be installed. Print cancelling is now available via <escape> (as it should with all software). Control over presentation of hardcopy is available, although text is a little spread out for my liking; printouts tend to get bulky enough as it is. It is possible to send text output to file and Pipedream happily accepts the data as tab file format, so presentation could be altered − but beware that errors don’t creep in! 4.8 Early difficulties with line-feeds on my RX80 were resolved with an additional print format dialogue box; surplus page feeds on my Desk Jet have yet to be eliminated but this is a one-off setting up problem. The manual should be much more thorough on this aspect, however − in fact the manual is probably the weakest part of the package. Better to be wordy and pedantic but comprehensive, than to be brief, with such a serious application. A full worked example is given, however, and this is very useful. Manuals for RISC-OS programs must be hard to write though and I appreciate the difficulties of anticipating questions from the user. 4.8 Summary of features 4.8 Space doesn’t permit a blow by blow treatise on CASA − in any case, demo discs are available, so that is the best introduction you can have. The following list of additional features should give you a flavour of the sophistication of !CASA: 4.8 Multiple windows with different views, loadings, scales simultaneously; frames can be rapidly converted to Grids and vice versa; automatic gravity loading switchable; trapesoidal, part-loads and point loads on members; settlements can be applied to supports; internal hinges at some or all nodes; lack-of-fit and thermal effects can be specified; Plotmate output available; quick input of regularly spaced nodes available. 4.8 Conclusion 4.8 The product is aimed at a specialist market, but at a visit to the Computers in Construction Exhibition recently, I did not see a compar able competitor for less than 10 times the entry level price of CASA. Sadly I saw not a single Archimedes. Yet for those Archimedes users who need such a thing, this program will pay for itself over and over. Students too will gain from having an affordable vehicle for “what happens if-ing”. 4.8 VisionSix have done very well in producing this application and it is definitely a “good thing”. Of course, the fact that it is an Archimedes application makes such excellence possible and also limits it’s use to those ‘in the know’. I wish them luck breaking into the market. 4.8 PS: I would be happy to compile a register of Engineering Software and sources; I’m sure there is more software available than is commonly advertised. If the response warrants it perhaps Paul will print such a list in Archive? A 4.8 4.8 Landmarks − Egypt & World War II 4.8 Doug Weller 4.8 Logotron has long been a producer of quality software for schools. It is now merged with Longman and is the publisher for BBC Software. Its latest offerings for the Archimedes are two packages complementing the BBC Landmarks series, although they can be used on their own without the TV or radio programmes. 4.8 Computer stimulated learning 4.8 Logotron makes the point that these packages are meant to stimulate learning and are not CAL. This means that much of the learning should take place away from the computer, particularly factual learning. The Landmarks programs are seen as providing a framework for children’s learning, helping children to gain an understanding of life in the past, a feeling for the time and the place and an empathy for the people involved, as well as an idea of how individual facts fit together. 4.8 This is not easy on a computer but I felt that these two programs went a long way towards meeting their stated aims. They do this by involving children in a dialogue with children of the past − with these two programs, a 12th century BC Egyptian boy and a 10 year old girl living in 1940. The screen is divided into two windows, one for text and one displaying relevant pictures. 4.8 Interactive history 4.8 Each program starts with the computer child introducing itself and asking for the user’s name. The user (the teachers’ book gives sugges tions for classroom organisation and advocates having children work in small groups) is then asked to type in his/her name. The computer child then offers to show the user around their town or village. Movement is either by arrow key or by the familiar GO N, although GOTO placename often works. 4.8 If this were all, it would be nice but not exciting. But there is more − children can also actually talk to the computer child, asking questions and making suggestions. Such questions as “Do you have any brothers or sisters” or suggestions such as “Turn on the radio” get a response which can often lead to further questions. 4.8 When I tried using the Project Egypt program after my son had finished using it, my responses showed the computer that I was a different person, and the Egyptian boy asked (very politely) if he was still speaking to Matthew. When I replied negatively, he apologised abjectly and restarted the program! 4.8 Realtime 4.8 The program stays active for three days. This means that when a group comes back to the computer the 2nd day, a day will appear to have passed for the computer child and things will seem to have happened while the computer was off. If you try to talk to the WWII child after the 3rd day she explains that the bomb damage at her school has been repaired so she can’t talk to you anymore, and says goodbye. 4.8 Summary 4.8 These two programs, Project Egypt and Second World War, are a must for anyone covering these periods and have access to an Archimedes. Costing only £19.95 and including excellent pupils’ materials for off-computer work, they bring history alive and put children in touch with life in the past − the goal of most teachers but one which is difficult to achieve. I only hope that Longman extend this format to other historical periods, including those covered by the BBC ZigZag series, covering the rest of Key Stage Two core history. A 4.8 4.8 Base 5 4.8 From 4.7 page 4 4.8 4.8 Multi−media Column 4.8 Ian Lynch 4.8 Following on from the March issue where we were starting to construct a Genesis application, we will add to our single Genesis page and illustrate one or two of the features available. If you are thinking of buying Genesis 2 or up-grading from 1, this should give you an idea of whether or not it is worthwhile. For example, the facility to customise your own windows by specifying whether or not scroll bars etc should be present, is a feature of Genesis 2 not available in 1. I know that a book fully documenting the programming script language is in preparation and should be available next month. When I get my hands on this, I should be able to describe how to make your applications more versatile. 4.8 Extra modules will also become available in order to make more special ised work, such as accessing the user port, easier. You could then write a multi-tasking application which controlled various devices in the background while you worked on something else. I have one of Unilab’s new A3000 I/O podules which has 3 user ports, one analogue port and a 1 MHz bus, so I expect to do some experimentation with this in the near future. I can recommend this as a solidly constructed add-on to anyone wanting to gain interfacing facilities for an A3000. 4.8 Menu page 4.8 Back to the application. We have a title page which contains text and a Next button and we need to make a page which will follow on from this. To create a new page, we need to go to the Sound icon on the icon bar and go Menu − Create page. This will create a page the size of the screen and you can then adjust in size. In this case, we will make a simple menu page so that particular routes can be chosen to look at some of the individual sound attributes. 4.8 The first task is to give the page a title by Menu − Info − Page − Title. Next, drag out four boxes into which we will enter the menu options. This is done in the same way as for the first page. Then we give the background the same grey colour as for the first page which makes the whole application have a consistent lay-out. I have also switched of the scroll bars as these are again not needed on this window. 4.8 This should give us a page which looks like the illustration below when the menu titles have been entered. 4.8 Saving and recalling 4.8 To save this page, use Menu − Save and the page will be saved with all its details. Note that this includes the position on the screen so that when the page is called up, it will appear in the position you speci fied. Double clicking on the Next button that was saved on the title page will now automatically cause the menu page to be displayed. This is because it was the “next page” created in the application. Note that if you double click the Next button with <adjust>, the title page will close leaving only the menu page displayed. This can be particularly important when using machines with limited memory since the more pages displayed, generally, the more memory consumed and you will eventually get a message telling you that there is not enough memory and to close something. 4.8 Linking pages 4.8 The real power of Genesis comes from its ability to make arbitrary links between pages. What we need now is to be able to link our menu options to pages which contain more detail about the subject the option refers to. We have four options, so we will need at least four more pages − I will deal with one at a time. The first is ‘Frequency and pitch’ and so we will make a page with this as the title in the same way as mentioned previously, Sound icon − Menu − Create page. (Incidentally, you will notice that you can’t do this with the Browser, only with the Genesis Editor which comes with Genesis.) It is now necessary to adjust the sizes and positions of the windows so that the mouse pointer can be placed in the ‘Frequency and pitch’ box on the menu page with the ‘Frequency and pitch’ page in view. Now click <select> in the box and then Menu − Link to, and a dialogue box with a variety of linking tools appears. The first of these is the double click link and this is simply dragged over the ‘Frequency and pitch’ window and released. It is possible to do more complex links which are, for example, dependent on some condition being satisfied but we will leave this until later. Now that the link is established, double-clicking on the menu box ‘Frequency and pitch’, will cause the ‘Frequency and pitch’ page to be displayed. 4.8 RISC-OS 4.8 Like most RISC-OS operations, linking is quite intuitive once you have done it once or twice Indeed, it sounds more complicated in a written description than it is in practice. It is probably pertinent at this point to mention the fact that there are many data types which Genesis understands specifically, Maestro, Euclid, Mogul, Armadeus samples, Draw files and Sprites and it is likely that other types will be catered for in future. In addition to this, any RISC-OS application can be launched from Genesis and so it is possible for several RISC-OS applications to work together forming a unified and comprehensive programming environ ment. 4.8 Help − Any animators? 4.8 We now need some information on the ‘Frequency and pitch’ page. One idea I had was to make a film using !Mogul or !Tween of a vibrating object producing a sound wave at a slow rate and also a quicker rate. If I then used Armadeus to capture a high pitch and a low pitch sound we have both a visual simulation and an indication of the difference in sound between high and low frequency sounds. Unfortunately, my abilities at animation are not great, so this bit is currently unfinished. Perhaps someone with !Euclid or Tween could have a go at making a film and then I will include it in the application. This should not be too difficult for someone practised in !Euclid or !Tween. 4.8 Capturing sounds 4.8 Genesis 2 understands Armadeus samples and so, to include them in the application, it is simply a matter of dragging a file into a frame, as with graphics films or text. Obviously, to create your own sounds you need the software and hardware for sound capture. The samples in this month’s application were captured using a cheap microphone connected to a Unilab computer interface linked to a Unilab I/O 3000 box on an A3000 with 2Mb RAM running Armadeus. The samples were then saved and trans ferred to Genesis 2. In fact, if you have enough memory, it is quite feasible to run Armadeus at the same time as Genesis 2 and transfer the files directly. Genesis 2 can play sound samples from disc so that applications will work on 1 Mb machines, but 2Mb is far better and 4Mb will not be wasted. 4.8 Storage 4.8 While a hard disc is not essential, it certainly makes life a lot easier. If you use floppies, make sure that filer windows not currently in use are closed, or you can get into complicated disc swapping (a bug in RISC-OS so I am told). Also, when moving from page to page in Genesis, double click with the right hand button as this closes the previous window saving memory (essential on 1 Mb machines). A 4Mb RAM upgrade for an A3000 is less expensive than a hard disc and would allow you to run the application from a RAM disc. This also has speed advantages. 4.8 Sign off 4.8 That’s all for this month. We can make further progress and introduce some more techniques next month. In the meantime I am exploring the possibilities of accessing interfacing ports using Genesis 2. A 4.8 4.8 Colton Software 4.8 From 4.7 page 14 4.8 4.8 PipeLine 4.8 Gerald Fitton 4.8 This month I’ll start with a few words on Macros. When I started this column, one of the things I expected to happen was that there would be an abundance of macros (just like the short programs which appeared for Wordwise). It didn’t happen at ﬁrst but now I’m beginning to see signs that, whilst I was right in principle, I was wrong on the time scale. Since last month, I have received many ideas for macros but many more of you have asked how to record them. 4.8 This is what you do. Hold down <ctrl> and then tap <F> followed by <Y> to start recording; you will be asked for a ﬁle name to complete the dialogue box. Then go through the motions (including mouse clicks etc) you want to record. Finally <ctrl-FY> again to switch off the recorder. When you record a macro on disc, please send me a copy for publication, saying what it does. 4.8 John Jordan has written to me before; he has been using PipeDream for some years now. I’m sure he won’t mind me saying this but he tells me that it is only recently that he realised that options <Ctrl-O> can be changed (several times) whilst you are working on a document. Perhaps you didn’t know that either! Anyway, one of the problems that keeps coming up in letters to me is that of choosing a suitable set of options for the type of document in use. For example, with tables (databases, etc) it is better to have Wrap OFF (and Insert on return OFF) but with plain text (wordprocessing) it is better to have Wrap ON. A simple (recorded) macro will switch you from a set of options suitable for plain text to a different set suitable for tables. You can call such a macro ‘Table’ and, just before you start entering tabular data, double click on the macro ﬁle to run it and so change the options. 4.8 Interword, Wordwise and other ﬁles 4.8 Since I included a request for help in transferring Interword ﬁles, I have received similar requests for other wordprocessors, spreadsheets, databases and the like. The good news is that I have been sent many discs with programs in BASIC which convert a wide variety of ﬁle formats to PipeDream format ﬁles. The bad news is that until I get them all sorted out I won’t know what works and what doesn’t. If you want to take a chance (or want to help) then send me a blank formatted disc, etc, and I will send you a copy of what I have. If you do have a go then please write me a ‘review’ for publication. Amongst the programs and explana tions I have found many references to ‘Liberator’; does anybody have a ‘Liberator’ and what is it? Don’t tell me that the Liberator is a WW2 airplane − I know that! 4.8 PipeDream text to !Draw text objects 4.8 I have received an interesting program from Lee McGinty (Isle of Wight) which allows you to enter text into PipeDream and then export it to !Draw. !Draw accepts the text as a text object. What makes this program so interesting is that you can introduce bold, italic, superscript, etc, you can insert any outline font at any size from within PipeDream and, when you import the PipeDream ﬁle into !Draw, the highlights and font changes are implemented. The copy I have is marked Evaluation Copy, so I am not sure of the status of this program but, if you are interested then write to me and I will forward your letters. 4.8 The GripeLine 4.8 This is Keith Matthews’ idea. Send me your Gripes about how PipeDream works (or doesn’t) and I’ll collect them together. Think of it as a way of lobbying Colton Software for further improvements! Those of you who received the April 1991 PipeLine disc will have seen Keith’s three gripes. This should have been only two because the third one went away when Keith upgraded from version 3.11 to 3.14. Perhaps the improvement was an example of the PUI in action? 4.8 On the topic of gripes, Peter Nye has a Z88 and makes printer highlight code 3 send the ASCII 27 to his printer. This means that in his text ﬁle he can introduce highlight 3 and follow it by other printer codes (in the main text) so implementing a wide range of printer functions. Perhaps this is the meaning of the phrase ‘Extended ... ’ in the User Guide. Anyway, Peter reckons that he can’t get this to work on the Archimedes, so this is his Gripe “Extending printer codes through highlight 3 doesn’t work on the Archimedes”. 4.8 Alan Highet complains that when he runs a macro which includes both recalculation and printing the printing starts before the recalculation is ﬁnished. Has anyone a solution to this? How can PipeDream be made to wait until it has ﬁnished before starting printing − it has to be a problem arising out of the multi-tasking nature of RISC-OS. 4.8 Help 4.8 B Warshavsky from The Netherlands has the EFF Hebrew Outline Font. His problem is how to write from right to left in PipeDream? He would also like to use more of the facilities available on his HPPaintjet printer. 4.8 The Local Authority for which Douglas Bell works has taken out a PipeDream 3 licence and they will be using it in Standard/Higher Grade Computing Studies as well as SCOTVEC Modules. If you have anything to offer him or wish to ask him then send me your letters and I will forward them to him. 4.8 Peter Nye suggests that if you are using a lot of printer codes which affect vertical alignment, you should prepare the text ﬁrst adding the printer codes afterwards. 4.8 I have a letter from Tony Cowley about ﬁnding bits of paperwork he has ﬁled somehow. Using PipeDream, he has reduced his problems to a minimum. His method is to ﬁle his incoming correspondence chronologically rather than by subject. He uses PipeDream to record key words in a column (entering the record number or date in another column). When he wants to ﬁnd a particular piece of paper he sorts the PipeDream database on the ﬁeld containing the key words and so discovers the date (or document number) of the piece of paper. The rest (as they say) is easy! 4.8 David Turner (of D & J Recording Ltd) wants to perform calculations in (hours) minutes and seconds. He has sent me a disc with functions he has built in to handle sums in the scale of 60. If you want to use PipeDream to do sums in scales other than the scale of 10 (or hexadecimal or binary) then drop me a line and I’ll explain David’s methods to you. 4.8 The National Curriculum keeps coming up in correspondence. Any PipeDream format ﬁles containing Attainment Targets and Assessment Recording and Analysis will be most gratefully received by many PipeLine readers. 4.8 Dr Peter Davies has sent me a disc with a simple way of dealing with Timetables. If you are interested send me a blank, formatted disc, etc and I’ll send you a copy. 4.8 The Z88 4.8 Thanks for your letters about the Z88. Please keep them coming even though I can’t say much about them in a column which is mainly for Archimedes users. I’m surprised how many of you have and use a Z88 for much of your wordprocessing and tabular numeric input with transfer to the Archimedes only for printing. I enjoy the freedom of tapping away producing PipeLine from almost anywhere. (That is, when Jill isn’t tapping away at her documents!) I port into the Archimedes to get good quality printouts. 4.8 PipeLine 4.8 Since I wrote the ﬁrst PipeLine column for the October 1989 Archive, Paul has printed over 50,000 of my words about the use of Colton Software’s PipeDream. Undoubtedly, PipeDream is one of those appli cations that grow on you as you get to know it better. From what you say in your letters to me, PipeLine has helped many hundreds of you to improve your PipeDream expertise. I think that it is because PipeDream is such a good piece of software that the PipeLine concept has been able to expand to the quarterly discs; I don’t know what proportion of you take the PipeLine discs but it must be fairly high. The ﬁrst disc was issued in July 1990 so the April 1991 disc makes up the ﬁrst set of four. Thanks for writing to me telling me how interesting, helpful and instructive the information on the discs have been to you. Of course, a lot of these disc based applications have come from you, the Archive readers, so I’d like to thank you all for helping make PipeLine what it has become. By the way, if you make a contribution which is published (on disc − not the Archive magazine) then you get a free copy of the disc in which your contribution appears; if you’ve already paid for the disc then you get a £5.00 refund! 4.8 PipeLine is not really a user group but it has grown (like Archive) to have a user group ‘feel’ to it. The ‘role model’ I have used as my starting point for PipeLine has been Paul’s Archive. PipeLine sub scribers write to me asking for help and, often, useful help is given (and I enjoy the correspondence). To a large extent, this ‘HelpLine’ is as successful as it is because I get such strong support from Robert Macmillan of Colton Software but it is also because about two dozen of you PipeLine enthusiasts have taken over some of the queries that are outside my ﬁeld of expertise. When a problem has been solved by a ‘PipeLine Helper’, they usually write it up for publication. Once again, if it is published, the writer gets a free disc. I would like PipeLine to expand its ‘HelpLine’ (and other! − you tell me what you want) activities more, to do this we need more helpers . . . You? 4.8 In conclusion 4.8 Having sent out the fourth disc of the series, I feel as if this is some kind of anniversary. Colton have brought out a much to be desired PipeDream mug − but not to celebrate PipeLine’s anniversary! I am working on the possibility that I might acquire one or two for PipeLine. If I do then you might get one as a prize if you do something spectacu lar enough! Let me know what or who you think deserves a PipeDream mug. 4.8 Seriously though. Please keep those letters (or better, discs) coming to Abacus Training. We’re relying on you to keep up the excellent quality of PipeLine. A 4.8 4.8 A better Draw: Version 1½ 4.8 Tord Eriksson 4.8 There is always someone who updates the software he is using, just for fun or for the simple reason that he wants more and the producer of the original software doesn’t plan to upgrade. Acorn hasn’t shown any interest in upgrading Draw, so Jonathan Marten has done it instead. 4.8 Installing Draw1½ 4.8 There are a few differences between !Draw and !Draw1½ to bear in mind when running it from a hard disc: The !Draw1½ !Run file has to check for the system files first and load them, before loading the !Draw1½ itself. 4.8 I learned this the hard way but it was enough to load !Draw before !Draw1½ to get the latter working. However, not everyone will have these problems, because later copies of !Draw1½ have been updated by Mr Marten. 4.8 (From now on, I will refer to !Draw1½ as ‘Plus’ and the original !Draw as just plain ‘Draw’.) 4.8 Draw made easy! 4.8 The first thing you notice is the different toolbox, in a separate window, and the added buttons “Ortho” and “Zoom”. The former makes lines snap to the grid and the latter makes the window zoom in and out between pre-set sizes which you can adjust. This is much quicker and easier because you often need to zoom in to select the lines you have drawn, group them into an entity and then look at the result by zooming out. 4.8 To rotate an entire drawing, or part of it, is almost impossible with Draw. With Plus you can, with ease, rotate, inverse or skew to your heart’s content, either by a certain number of degrees or by 180 degrees at a time. This makes drawing manipulation much easier. Even text can be manipulated in a similar way but you have to turn the text into a draw file first, using !FontDraw, another handy utility. It is not as powerful as FontFx but very useful anyway. 4.8 Homemade italics, anyone? 4.8 Naturally, as with Draw, you can mix drawings with text, as you wish. If you feel inclined to skew the text it is very easy to do. On the whole, Plus is easier to use than Draw, even if it has one or two rough edges. So if a font hasn’t got any oblique or italic version you can easily imitate it! 4.8 Conclusion 4.8 Considering that this is the result of one person’s toil in his spare time, it’s an amazing product − I do have problems with the drawing as spurious lines sometimes appear for no apparent reason. So I use Draw first, then Plus. I look upon Draw1½ as a complement to Draw, not the ultimate !Draw version but it is worth every penny. Draw1½ is available on Shareware disc Nº34 from Norwich Computer Services. It is cheap, powerful and user intuitive − can you beat that? A 4.8 4.8 Pineapple PAL Coder 4.8 Ned Abell 4.8 The PAL coder is a useful addition to the Archimedes in that it does two things; it allows you to connect up external equipment to the computer and it lengthens existing monitor leads! 4.8 The add-on unit is a plastic box about 11 x 5.5 x 2 cms which has about 30 cms of ribbon cable coming out of one end with a 9 way D connector on the end. This connects to the monitor output socket on the computer. On the other end of the box is another 9 pin socket which now acts as the new monitor socket. There is also a BNC socket which gives PAL coded video and an interlace switch. The whole unit is powered from a plug type power supply. 4.8 Output 4.8 The output from this unit cannot be fed directly into a TV set aerial socket but if you have a set with a phono plug “AV” video socket or the “SCART” type of socket, you should be able to feed the picture from the coder into the set and view it by switching the set to video or the AV setting. Check with a TV shop that your set can do this and that the SCART connector has an adaptor to connect to the BNC on the coder. 4.8 Recording 4.8 If you have a video recorder, you can record pictures from the Archi medes onto tape by feeding the recorder video input with the output from the coder. A normal 9 pin colour or monochrome monitor can be used at the same time as you are using the video output. 4.8 Quality 4.8 The pictures on the video output are of a high standard but they are not as good as on the monitor. This is to be expected as any PAL coding system is trying to squeeze a lot of information into a restricted bandwidth. With the box in circuit, there seems to be no change in the RGB monitor display. If I compare the pictures generated by my Arvis genlock and the Pineapple coder then there is little difference in perceived quality. 4.8 Opening the lid! 4.8 Inside the box, you will find a variable inductor that can help to control any “hooking” at the top of the coded picture and a variable capacitor which can be used to adjust cross colour or moire patterns to a minimum. It’s a very well made product and, for someone starting off with an Archimedes and not able to afford a proper monitor, it’s a very useful add-on. 4.8 The ability to provide a video output can also be of great use if you want to distribute your Archimedes pictures to another display or use them on video tape. The retail price is £69 + VAT. A 4.8 4.8 Developing a RISC-OS Utility − Part 1 4.8 Darren Sillett 4.8 My aim in this series of articles is to illustrate how to produce a fairly complex RISC-OS utility with the minimum of hard work. To this end I intend to develop a BASIC library over the coming months which will provide a cushioning layer between you and the window manager. 4.8 Standard application files 4.8 An application is represented as a directory whose name begins with ‘!’, e.g. !Edit. Inside this directory, the application’s files are stored. Some of these files have a special significance in the desktop. These are detailed below: 4.8 !Boot − is executed when the desktop Filer first displays the appli cation directory. 4.8 !Run − is executed by the desktop Filer when the user double-clicks on the application directory. 4.8 !Sprites − contains the main application sprite and any filetype sprites used. 4.8 !Help − is executed by the desktop Filer when the user selects Help from the Filer menu. 4.8 !RunImage − is the executable code of the main application program. 4.8 Templates − is the application’s window template file. 4.8 Sprites − is the application’s private sprite file. 4.8 Getting started 4.8 The first step in creating a new application is to make a new directory on the your working disc which contains the name of the application. Our application is going to be called !Ultimate so create a new directory with that name. 4.8 The next step is to start creating some of the files described above. Use !Paint to create a sprite with the same name as the directory. The sprite should be about 68 OS units square which corresponds to a mode 12 sprite 34 pixels wide by 17 pixels high. You can also create a small sprite called sm!ultimate which will be used by the Filer when display ing Full info on the application. This sprite should be 34 OS units square which corresponds to a mode 12 sprite 16 to 19 pixels wide by 9 pixels high. 4.8 Save this file as !Sprites inside the newly created application directory. 4.8 The next file to create is the !Boot file. This contains the command to load the sprite file into the Wimp sprite area. This is not strictly needed in the case of our application because the desktop Filer does this automatically when no !Boot file exists but, for completeness, and in case of future expansion, we will still create one. 4.8 To create the !Boot file, use !Edit to create a new obey file containing the following lines and save it in the application directory. 4.8 The !Boot file should contain the following: 4.8 | >!Boot 4.8 IconSprites <Obey$Dir>.!Sprites 4.8 Last of the simple files to create is the !Run file. This should be created using !Edit in a similar fashion to that for the !Boot file. 4.8 The file should contain the following lines: 4.8 | >!Run 4.8 IconSprites <Obey$Dir>.!Sprites 4.8 Set Ultimate$Dir <Obey$Dir> 4.8 WimpSlot -min 16k -max 16k 4.8 Run <Ultimate$Dir>.!RunImage 4.8 The sprite file is loaded again in case the application has been run from the command line. An environment variable called Ultimate$Dir is set containing a copy of the variable Obey$Dir. This allows the application to access its application directory once the program itself is running, enabling it to access, for example, the BASIC library which we will be creating. 4.8 The WimpSlot command informs the Task Manager of the memory requirements of the application. The last command executes the main application program. 4.8 The main application 4.8 The !RunImage file contains the main program code which will be developed over the coming months. The program presented here is a bare skeleton which will be fleshed out as more features are incorporated into the application. 4.8 All the program manages to do at the moment is initialise itself to the Task Manager and display its icon on the icon bar. To quit the appli cation you need to use the Task Manager window. 4.8 10 REM >!RunImage 4.8 20 LIBRARY “<Ultimate$Dir>.WimpLib” 4.8 30 PROCinitialise 4.8 40 task_id% = FNinitialise_wimp (“Ultimate utility”) 4.8 50 bar_icon% = FNcreate_bar_icon (“!ultimate”,bar_icon_left) 4.8 60 REPEAT 4.8 70 SYS “Wimp_Poll”,mask%, wimp_block% TO result% 4.8 80 CASE result% OF 4.8 90 WHEN 17,18 : PROCreceive_ message(wimp_block%!16) 4.8 100 ENDCASE 4.8 110 UNTIL finished% 4.8 120 PROCclosedown_wimp(task_id%) 4.8 130 END 4.8 4.8 200 DEFPROCinitialise 4.8 210 finished% = FALSE 4.8 220 mask% = 0 4.8 230 ENDPROC 4.8 4.8 300 DEFPROCreceive_message(message%) 4.8 310 CASE message% OF 4.8 320 WHEN 0 : finished% = TRUE 4.8 330 ENDCASE 4.8 340 ENDPROC 4.8 Line 20 − Initialises the BASIC library. 4.8 Line 30 − Calls routine to initialise application variables. 4.8 Line 40 − Initialises the application to the Task Manager using one of the WimpLib routines. 4.8 Line 50 − Displays the application’s icon on the icon bar. If a value of bar_icon_right is given instead of bar_icon_left then the icon will appear on the right hand side of the icon bar. 4.8 Lines 60..110 − Main WIMP polling loop. This is where the application gets its chance to interact with the user and other applications. At the moment, it just recognises a quit request from the Task Manager but more will be added later. 4.8 Line 120 − Closes down the WIMP parts of the application i.e. removes it from the icon bar. 4.8 Lines not explicitly referenced are either unimportant or left for explanation later. 4.8 WimpLib 4.8 To aid development and provide a useful routine library for everybody the windowing parts of the application will be found in a BASIC library called, appropriately, Wimplib. 4.8 10 REM >WimpLib 4.8 20 DEF FNinitialise_wimp(app_name$) 4.8 30 DIM wimp_block% 512 4.8 40 SYS “Wimp_Initialise”, 200, &4B534154, app_name$ TO version%,task_id% 4.8 50 bar_icon_left = -2 4.8 60 bar_icon_right = -1 4.8 70 =task_id% 4.8 4.8 100 DEF FNcreate_bar_icon (app_name$,position) 4.8 110 wimp_block%!0 = position 4.8 120 wimp_block%!4 = 0 4.8 130 wimp_block%!8 = 0 4.8 140 wimp_block%!12 = 0 4.8 150 wimp_block%!16 = 68 4.8 160 wimp_block%!20 = %10000000000010 4.8 170 $(wimp_block% + 24) = app_name$ 4.8 180 SYS “Wimp_CreateIcon”,, wimp_block% TO icon% 4.8 190 =icon% 4.8 4.8 200 DEF PROCclosedown_wimp(task_id%) 4.8 210 SYS “Wimp_CloseDown”, task_id%, &4B534154 4.8 220 ENDPROC 4.8 What next? 4.8 Next month I hope to embark on the subject of menus and present some easy to use library routines for manipulating them. 4.8 I have not decided on the application’s precise use yet. I would be keen to hear of any suggestions for features that could be added to the application as it grows. So, if you have any ideas or would find a particular feature handy, please write and tell me and then at least the application will be of use to someone! 4.8 I can be contacted either through Archive or at 43, Kingfisher Walk, Ash, Aldershot, Hampshire GU12 6RF. A 4.8 4.8 Crossword Callup 2 4.8 Alan Wilburn 4.8 This program, aimed at teachers, started life on the BBC B and has been rewritten as a RISC-OS compatible application with an increase in speed, size of the database and the opportunity to use RISC-OS printer drivers. 4.8 The program comes on an unprotected disc in a strong vinyl A5 folder with two comprehensive manuals. One manual is from the original BBC B version dealing with the database and the second dealing with the Archimedes enhancements. The second manual assumes you have little knowledge of RISC-OS and explains how to back up the disc, load the program etc − ideal for teachers. 4.8 The program 4.8 The program makes crosswords, which can be printed out or completed on screen, from a supplied database. The datafiles can be edited and added to − 490 clues are supplied as a start − with a limit of 4,000 clues for a disc-based program. 4.8 To get started, you open the directory and double click on the appli cation and it will load, taking over the computer. If you have more than one drive and/or hard disc, the default has to be set from the command line − it can only be run from $ Dir. on a hard disk. After the title screen, the main menu appears. Six of the options are for managing the database and the others are for constructing a crossword, printer setup and an exit to the desktop. 4.8 The database 4.8 A clue file has five fields: Clue number, Clue, Answer, Level of difficulty (three choices) and Linked subjects. 4.8 All of these fields can be edited and a new clue file can be entered. Bump icons allow you to move through the files easily either singly or in steps of ten and fifty. 4.8 The Main Menu options give a choice of hard copies of subjects, clue list linked to a subject and a word list for a subject. The database can be cleared from a menu option if you wish to start from scratch. This is more of a hang over from the original version which could only handle just over a hundred files on a 40T drive, but is necessary if Cross Number Puzzles are to be made. On the disc are two directories, one for the saved sprite and word file (only one of each which are overwritten each time) and the other containing tools. The tools are to alter clue files from the BBC B version into Archimedes format, merge two files and expand the database to allow more than 4,000 files. 4.8 Printer options 4.8 Menu option 8 is for setting up the printer. From this, pre-loaded RISC- OS printer drivers can be set for scalable printouts set by a slider icon or the default Epson driver can be chosen. The background colour of the crossword can be chosen from a supplied grey palette − any other colours would have to be dealt with in Paint. There is an option to automatically save a sprite of the crossword grid and a double spaced !Edit file of clues and answers which can be loaded directly into a DTP application. Bump icons are available to set the width of the Edit file and the number of copies to be printed. 4.8 Making a crossword 4.8 To make a crossword, menu option 1 is taken and you decide whether you are going for a printout or on screen solving. The subjects are then displayed and you choose which you want, followed by the choice of levels of difficulty. The computer loads the relevant clues and you are asked to decide how many clues you want to use. The grid is then built up on screen. If you don’t like the grid, the computer will keep redrawing until you are satisfied. If you are solving it on screen, you move around the grid using the cursor keys and the clue appears at the bottom of the screen. The answer is entered and you continue to the next clue. At any time, you can remove an answer. 4.8 If the printout option was taken, the grid and clues are saved to disc and the grid/clues/answers are printed out over three pages. The printout was good from the RISC-OS driver for my dot matrix printer but I found the built-in print option printed across the full 136 columns on my printer and I didn’t get round to altering the DIP switches to try it out. If the printer is not connected, the sprite and Edit files are saved before an error message is generated and you can exit the program to use the files in DTP. 4.8 In the Archimedes’ manual there are sample crossword/number puzzles including some using the mask capabilities of Paint to overlay the grid on a background picture. 4.8 Comments 4.8 I like the program but I find it an unnecessary complication to have to set the default drive from the command line and who wants to clutter $ Dir. on a hard disc? I consider it a waste of very limited computer time in school to complete a crossword on screen and so it seems to me that the most useful part of the program is the DTP aspect. I need to have crosswords on one sheet so that they can be easily photocopied to be used as backup / extension / revision work to various lessons and so I prefer using the two saved files with DTP. Otherwise, it means physical cut and paste to make up one sheet from the printouts. Using 2Mb RAM on an A3000, I found it very easy to make a crossword, exit to the desktop load the two files into Impression and go back and do the next cross word. I experimented with the mask / overlay technique and found that it can give very impressive results with little effort. 4.8 Crossword Callup is available from Northern Micromedia for £19 +VAT + £1 p&p (=£26). A 4.8 4.8 WorraCad 4.8 Mike Hobart 4.8 First, the facts. WorraCad is a fully RISC-OS compatible, “dongle” protected program which runs comfortably on a basic 1Mb machine, at least for simple jobs. It comes with a clear, generously-illustrated, well-printed and quite comprehensive manual which is a little under- indexed. It costs £82. 4.8 The program function is, to quote from the manual, “Computer Aided Draughting (often mistakenly called Computer Aided Design − an entirely different type of application) ... a process whereby the computer is used as a means of simplifying the drafting process”. Its other theme is accuracy: eighteen significant figures. I recently zoomed in on a section of a drawing by a factor of over 700,000! In the laboratory, we use electron microscopes for that. 4.8 When loaded, WorraCad displays its icon on the icon bar and when this is clicked, a drawing area, a menu strip and a coordinate window appear. The menus are also available in the standard RISC-OS fashion via the menu button, but, personally, I prefer the “radio buttons” of the menu strip. The top button moves you around the menu hierarchy, announcing your present position and, if clicked, moving you towards the root. Relevant buttons in the sub-menus remain “on” until deselected. This is very handy most of the time. For instance if you are trying to draw lines, but feel the need to zoom in, you can go “down and up” to the zoom menu, perform the zoom, then reverse the route, but you do not have to reselect “lines” in the “Draw” menu, just draw. Occasionally, this feature can lead you astray, for instance when the select menu has been in use, you should make sure that you are not resetting the origin by mistake just because you forgot to switch off this option. My general feeling is that this is a well thought out part of the program. 4.8 WorraCad uses three kinds of “primitive”: points, straight lines and arcs. Lines can be full feature lines or construction lines which are used to facilitate the drawing process by providing a skeleton. Lines may be drawn parallel, normal or tangential to other lines, or at a specific angle. Circles and arcs constructed by reference to either centre and radius, three points or more complex constructions involving centre, point and angular or distance offset. 4.8 Provided that you are drawing fairly standard engineering or building structures, this is all very convenient, but the more complex flowing shapes of, for instance, a boat, Concorde or a Gothic arch must be approached by a series of approximations, which would be tedious. 4.8 WorraCad has provision for up to sixteen drawing layers. The layers may be hidden (after a redraw), or can be used as guides for work on the current layer. Colours for each element in a drawing may be set from within the layer control and are not fixed to each layer. There are also options to hide construction points and lines (and most other output categories) from the final product, without having to delete them. There is full control over paper size. Orthogonal (square) and isometric (diamond) grids are supported. Various transformations of bits of the drawing are provided for, e.g. mirror about any line, stretch, rotate. The facilities for multiple replication of objects with offsets or rotations programmed would make designing, say, a rack-and-pinion system a doddle. 4.8 The behaviour of the grid feature can sometimes be a little disconcert ing. The basic system is very good, allowing grid divisions to be at any pitch you like, though twelfths are not supported, so Imperial measures have to be “fudged”. Sometimes, the grid disappears if the screen magnification is wrong. It is still there, and objects still attach themselves to it, but you need a second window at a different magnifi cation to see it. Incidentally, the zoom system is exquisite, offering not just numerical zooms, but also fit to page and a “zoom to rubber banded area” option. Also disconcerting can be the appearance of the screen if an action, especially a deletion, has been done: nothing seems to have happened. This is due to the use of a command-driven re-drawing system. The purpose is to eliminate the long waits with which most readers will be familiar when using !Draw; if there are many objects on the screen, the redrawing can be very slow. WorraCad avoids this, and a quick jab at the “r” key is all that is needed to make apparent the amendments (deletions etc) since the last redraw. Insertions appear at once. 4.8 What is essential, if you are to get the best out of WorraCad, is that you should know what you are aiming at. The dimensions and layout should be clear in your mind, as should the approach you are going to use to construct your drawing. The example in the manual, a drawing (a full- feature engineering drawing) of an audio cassette is a very good example of the approach needed. Draw a rectangular outline, then fillet (round) the corners on a 3 mm arc, then centre the spools, draw construction circles and lines appropriate for the “teeth”, draw a tooth, and its share of the circle, then replicate it to fill, then the spindle holes, the raised area (hatched), the tape window and finally the body screws. You could draw a perfectly recognisable cassette in !Draw more quickly, but with this drawing you could imagine making one in the workshop. 4.8 The example makes use of known facts about cassettes. You could quite easily design your own cassette with different dimensions, drive mechanisms etc. on a fairly freehand basis. If you want to draw a circle to fit between two angled lines at a given point, you would not need to know the exact diameter of a circle required, just the lines and the point. WorraCad will work out the right size circle and will dimension your drawing for you. You can label your design with a special font of technical appearance (like the ones you buy as stencils for a drawing pen). If you need the drawing in a less technical format, WorraCad will save it as a !Draw file, available for outline font text, Bezier curve constructions, and colour fills. WorraCad provides for hatches, which !Draw does not. Incidentally, each segment of line (i.e. between clicks) is an object in WorraCad and its !Draw output, so a big drawing can get very big in drawing demands. Printing is by RISC-OS printer drivers or a built-in HPGL plotter driver. Input is allowed from DXF using an importer program whose icon will delight afficionados of “The Hitch- Hikers Guide to the Universe”. There is no facility for !Draw input as Bezier curves and outline fonts are not supported and position informa tion would need to be rounded. 4.8 Overall, this is a very professional package. It essentially aims to make anyone look like a skilled draughtsman (at least to my untrained eye) and it provides the tools to take the drudge out of making good technical drawings. It is not a package which removes the need to think and plan, nor is it to be thought of as a better version of !Draw (there is one if those on Shareware 34) but it does allow the construction of accurate drawings by those who lack the skill with pen and paper, and would doubtless accelerate the work of a skilled draughtsman. A 4.8 4.8 Using the PC Emulator − Part 9 4.8 Richard Forster 4.8 The PC emulator does a very good job of pretending to be a real IBM compatible but when you look behind the facade, it is still an Archi medes. You cannot use many of the Archimedes functions when under emulation but there are a few things we can do which a user of a real PC cannot do. You can of course alter how much memory is available to you by plugging and unplugging modules but I cannot think of any situations where it would be preferable to having less memory so I will skirt around this ‘facility’. 4.8 Sound is, of course, the one thing the PC emulator falls down on. Audio effects on standard PCs are not amazing but, nevertheless, some programs do attempt to use them and hearing the racket that is usually produced by the emulator calls for one thing − the ability to turn it off. Software which has musical effects will usually have an off option which you can use but sounds which usually accompany errors are unstoppable. 4.8 To turn the sound off you need to issue the command: 4.8 *SPEAKER OFF 4.8 before loading in the emulator. If you are likely to always want the sound off, you can place this command in the !Run file of your !PC directory. If you do this, make sure that you place it before the line which looks like: 4.8 Run <PCe$Dir>.Genboot.!RunImage 4.8 or the command will never be executed. 4.8 Alternatively, if you still want the sound, you could experiment with other sound voices. The emulator picks the voice in the voices list which is set to channel 1 and uses it when producing the sounds. Changing the sound voice used is not quite as easy as just typing in: 4.8 *CHANNELVOICE 1 5 (or something similar) 4.8 This is because some of the files which are run before the emulator is operational, unplug various modules in order to give more memory and this includes modules like Stringlib and Percussion. If you want to use sounds from these modules (personally, I think some of them work better when anything more than a single beep is produced), you must alter the file !Modules in the Genboot directory of !PC and place a | character before name of the module you want to use. If you want to use a sound voice from a module stored in RAM (i.e. loaded in) you must change the file !Config in the same directory, changing the Y to a N after the line about removing all RAM modules. 4.8 Hard disc users have a couple of things they can do. Firstly, you can write protect your PC hard disc drive, which might at some stage be useful. To do this you simply find the file called Drive_n (where n is the letter of the PC hard disc drive) in Archimedes mode, and alter its access codes. This can be done most easily from the desktop where all you have to do is make sure the “File has owner write-access” is not set. 4.8 You can also set up several PC hard disc drives. The easiest way of doing this is, once you have created the first one, which will be called Drive_C, is to rename it Drive_D and then create another Drive_C using the program. It is also necessary to change the file !Run2 in !PC (or the file !SCSIRun2 if you use a SCSI drive) to tell the computer that you have two usable PC hard disk drives. All this applies to version 1.33, and so if you have an earlier version you might have to fiddle about a bit. 4.8 You want to edit the necessary file to include the new path name of the new drive and you want to place it on the same line as the previous path for the Drive_C file. If the files were hidden on your hard disc in the directory PC, off from the root then you would be changing a line like: 4.8 /<PCe$Dir>.!RunImage <PCe$Dir>. ROM adfs::4.$.PC.Drive_C 4.8 to 4.8 /<PCe$Dir>.!RunImage <PCe$Dir>. ROM adfs::4.$.PC.Drive_C adfs::4.$.Drive_D 4.8 Once you have done this you should load up the emulator and run the file FDISK. You will notice that there is an option 5 to “Select next fixed disk drive” which is not available if you only have one PC hard disk drive set up. You can use it to toggle between the two drives. When you have selected the new one you should select option 1. Do not worry if you are on the wrong drive when you press it, you will get an error and you can return to the menu and select the next one. Once you have set up the drive you should execute a format command. 4.8 If you have not already set up any hard disk drives, the task is simple. In order to set up both discs, and to install the system files on drive C so that you can boot up from it, you simply type in (and answer the prompts): 4.8 FORMAT C: \s FORMAT D: 4.8 If you have already set up a hard disk drive and have just created another, check which one is already formatted. To do this, simply check drive C and D in turn, taking a catalogue of each. This should reveal which is the existing one, and you can format the other. Remember that if you have already had a drive set up, you must make sure you format the other one or you could lose your data. 4.8 These two things that we can do on a hard disk drive system are very useful, especially when they are used together. I have my system set up with a 512K drive C and a 5Mbytes drive D. All my boot files are on drive C, including a couple of utilities I find useful, and there is an autoexec .bat file set up with the single command: 4.8 D: 4.8 The effect of this is that when I load up the PC emulator, the system files are loaded from drive C and the system switches straight into drive D. Drive C has been write protected as mentioned before and so my system files are safe from accidental deletion. They are also quickly accessible from wherever I am on Drive D. If I worried about viruses, which I do not, I would be reasonably safe in the knowledge that they would find it extremely difficult to get at those system files, because the source of their protection is from the Archimedes, not the PC. 4.8 On this Drive C I have two files from the original boot disc which I personally find invaluable, but which I have not yet mentioned. They are PUTFILE.EXE and GETFILE.EXE, and they are the only files on the boot disc which you would be unlikely to find on a real PC’s disk. They allow you to transfer files from the PC emulator to the Archimedes. There are now a few programs for the desktop which allow you to read PC formatted discs and a couple allow you to save data to them, but the ONLY way to do this from the PC end is with these two files. 4.8 The syntax of the two commands is the same. They both require a source filename and a destination filename. GETFILE.EXE takes a file from the Archimedes and transfers it to the PC, and PUTFILE.EXE takes a file from the PC and places it on the Archimedes. When using them it is best to include full pathnames for the Archimedes part although, for the PC part, the filename will suffice. 4.8 A use of the two programs might be to transfer a text file between the two sources. So if I had the file CORR91 in the directory $.1WP.DOC.LETTERS of my Archimedes hard disk, and I wanted to transfer it to the current directory of the PC emulator calling it CORR91.TXT, I would type in: 4.8 GETFILE :4.$.1WP.DOC.LETTERS. CORR91 CORR91.TXT 4.8 If I then edited it and wanted to place it back where it came from I would type in: 4.8 PUTFILE CORR91.TXT :4.$.1WP.DOC .LETTERS.CORR91 4.8 You have to be careful when using both of these commands because they will give no warning if they have to overwrite an existing file. You might also run into difficulties if you are trying to transfer data on a single drive machine as the utilities will not give you a prompt to change between you PC and Archimedes disc. In these cases the best option is to set up a ramdisk as shown in parts 3 and 6 of this series and use this as the PC disk. 4.8 As a demonstration of what we have learned so far and to demonstrate GETFILE, we shall create a batch file using edlin which will allow us to get multiple files. As added protection, the program will not let you use a filename if there already exists a file with the same name. To use it you simply type in GET followed by an even number of parameters, alternatively the file to get and the file to save, e.g. 4.8 GET :4.$.LET1 1.TXT :4.$.LET2 2.TXT :4.$.LET3 3.TXT 4.8 So here it is, a batch file to be called GET.BAT 4.8 echo off 4.8 :start 4.8 if “%1”=“” goto end 4.8 if “%2”=“” goto nosecond 4.8 if exist %2 goto secexist 4.8 getfile %1 %2 4.8 if errorlevel 1 goto end 4.8 echo File %1 got and saved as file %2 4.8 shift 4.8 shift 4.8 goto start 4.8 :secexist 4.8 echo Second file already exists! (I will not overwrite) 4.8 goto end 4.8 :nosecond 4.8 echo You must give me a file name to save to! 4.8 goto end 4.8 :end A 4.8 4.8 Shareware Disc Nº38 4.8 Alan Highet 4.8 All the programs have been tested on a standard A310 and on a 4 Mbyte A410 with ARM3 and SCSI hard drive. Unless otherwise stated, all programs ran on both machines. 4.8 Address 4.8 This is a multi-tasking address book which comes with a data file of useful addresses. A data file can be loaded by double clicking or dragging to the icon bar in the usual manner. Alternatively, you can merge files by dragging them to the open address window. There is space for the name, address, telephone numbers and remarks. Clicking <menu> on the window gives access to the usual choices of add, delete, goto, print, save, sort and, of course, search. A search will display the cards found in a separate window but this can only be saved as a separate file and not printed. For this you need to go to the main window and match up the cards or save the found file and reload it as a main file. 4.8 The print option does not work with my laser printer as no page feed is sent but I see no reason why it won’t work with an ordinary dot matrix printer. The search routine is fast but the sort routine isn’t, which the author admits to, but I don’t think that is a great handicap as I don’t really see any great need for regular sorting. 4.8 Graphdraw 4.8 This program allows you to generate graphs in a multi-tasking window. Data may be entered in various forms. A separate edit window is shown on screen where the x/y coordinates may be entered manually up to a maximum of 40 pairs. You can also drag files from Edit or Pipedream using CSV format although Tab files will also load. Clicking <menu> on the edit window opens an option menu allowing you to clear the data or save it as a data file. 4.8 Plotting the graph is also done from this menu, and a second window opens displaying the graph with the axes automatically scaled and labelled in Trinity outline font. The points are displayed as small boxes and options are available to plot the best fit straight line, least square fit to a parabolic equation, a polynomial fit for orders 3 to 6 and a smooth cubic spline through all the data points. 4.8 A further sub-menu allows you to print the data from each of these calculations along with the individual errors for each point. You can also print the graph, save it as a screenfile or save it as a drawfile. Many of the options can be altered such as the legend size and the graph title and other items could be added in Draw. 4.8 Overall, this is a very well written program which does everything asked of it. Hopefully, the author will continue to develop it allowing more data points, more types of data entry and different types of graph. 4.8 Curves 4.8 A short program to draw curves which unfortunately has no documentation and not even any REM statements to help you so, not knowing the values to enter I managed to produce only a straight line. 4.8 Chain 4.8 This is a game for 2, 3 or 4 players played on an eight by eight grid. Each player can be human or computer and the computer has varying skill levels. The idea of the game is to place one of your tiles on an empty square or on a square already occupied by yourself. Each square has a critical limit and when that is reached the square ‘explodes’. This means that the square loses all its tiles and each adjacent square gains one tile of a similar colour to the exploded tile. This of course could very well take that tile over its critical limit and so it in turn will ‘explode’ in a chain reaction, hence the name. 4.8 The board is nicely presented and works very well and my only complaint is the endgame. Try as I might, when playing with two human players, I cannot get the game to end and I wonder if the author has ever finished it. Once all the squares are of one colour, the game should end but this doesn’t happen and the chain reaction continues for ever. I assume this to be a bug as playing against the computer works fine. 4.8 Apart from this niggle, I think it a good game but feel it would be even better turned into a multi-tasking desktop game. 4.8 Tetris 4.8 This is a good implementation of the classic game with good graphics and changing background pictures. For the few people who don’t know the game, the idea is to position random shaped blocks, falling down the screen, in a neat fashion at the bottom. If a line is completed, with no gaps, it disappears and all the other blocks move down one. The only controls are to rotate the block and move it left to right. Having played the game before, I didn’t bother to read the !ReadMe file and consequently didn’t realise there were options to pause the game, display the number of blocks used, display the next block and even title the many background pictures. So please take note, always read any documentation! 4.8 Calendar 4.8 This displays a neat window with the current month displayed. Two arrow are provided to step forward or backwards month by month and you can change the format to read Mon-Sun or Sun-Sat but that is all. I think it would have been nice to be able to mark some day with appointments but maybe the alarm clock provided free with the Archimedes does all that for you. 4.8 Clipboard 4.8 This module allows you to copy and paste between writeable icons using some Ctrl keys. An example of a writeable icon is the Palette save on the icon bar. You can copy and paste or cut and paste between any icons in any program but I’m not actually sure if that is much use. 4.8 Fontfix 4.8 A lot of commercial outline fonts will not load into FontEd and this program strips out all the surplus data from an outline font allowing you to load it. The author says the program is designed to let you change the name of the font to the original, i.e. Trinity to Times, but it does allow you to alter the fonts themselves in FontEd which raises the question of breaking copyright. 4.8 Italiciser 4.8 Double clicking on this application produces a small window in which you can alter the angle you require then any Draw file dragged to the window can be dragged back to Draw with slope of the selected angle. 4.8 Positive or negative angle are catered for and it works very well giving some interesting effects. 4.8 Menon 4.8 Menon is an icon on the desktop, or on the icon bar, which acts like a filer allowing you easy access to files that may be hidden on your hard disc. Any file or application can be dropped onto the icon and this will then be displayed when clicking <menu> over the icon and sub-menus can be set up in a similar manner to ADFS. The program worked well on most things I tried but didn’t work properly with Impression files as it loaded a second copy of the program. 4.8 Modes 4.8 This program acts in a similar manner to the palette icon giving you easy access to other modes than 12, 15 or 20 with an editable file for the modes you want to use. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get it to work. Firstly the program demands a RAM filing system to be set which it loads with files and then, when selecting a mode, an error message appears ‘bad wimp mode’. I’m not sure what is wrong and there is no proper help file to explain what the files in ram actually do. 4.8 Fontselect 4.8 This program sits inside your !Font directory and, instead of installing all the fonts, it lets you select only the groups of fonts you require. It was written because of the large number of fonts available and the inability of some programs to handle them. I followed the instructions and finally got the program to run and a nice window appeared allowing me to select various fonts but not all of them! Although I had ticked Trinity font, Impression told me it couldn’t find that font and my !boot file which installs the fonts and Impression no longer worked, so I think I’ll stick with my old system. A 4.8 4.8 Presenter Story 4.8 Ned Abell 4.8 Presenter Story (v.1.20) is not the sort of software which will appeal to all Archimedes users but those of us who need to communicate will wonder why we never had anything as comprehensive as it before − and whilst blessing it − will curse its failings! 4.8 It is designed to allow the Archimedes to become a mode 12, sixteen colour presentation tool so that you can hook it up to a video projector or large monitor. You insert a disc and step your way through a presentation containing text, logos, maps and sprites by pressing the space bar, each press giving you a new screen full of information in different fonts, in different colours, with different backgrounds etc. Pie charts, line and bar charts can be displayed and sprite animation is also possible − you can even set it up to sequence automatically. 4.8 Many video projectors, (not the Sony 2040), will hook up directly to the Arc in place of the monitor. The business person can prepare material and even, at the last minute, change it or re-order it. Thus, it is also very useful to teachers, trainers and sales people who can throw the overhead projector acetates away and score more than a few points with clearer, up to the minute presentations. 4.8 Another great plus point of Presenter Story is allowing the use of frameworks to generate a house style in all subsequent presentations. 4.8 Video production 4.8 I’ve mentioned before in Archive that the Amiga is the currently preferred computer in semi-professional video captioning and animation circles. Presenter Story puts the Archimedes firmly in contention as a new video tool with existing hardware packages of genlock and digitiser. The presentations that are created with Presenter Story can be used by the genlock to affect any video going through it and function key f12 is used to toggle the overlay. If you use the Wild Vision 400 genlock, the manual says the software can trigger fade in and out, override the genlock and provide a buffered I2C bus as well as four GPI interfaces (for triggering a vision mixer etc). Some of these options, however, have yet to be implemented. 4.8 I use an ArVis S-VHS genlock and have found no incompatibility but the shadow key is not supported − I’m working on it! There are also keys that will provide interlace, an edge colour to the text and there is also a drop-shadow toggle. These effects are shown after the screen is re-drawn and can help the display when it is overlaid on live video. The Watford digitizer is supported and will allow you to load images as backgrounds into the map/logo editor for using as templates. 4.8 In television, this use of graphics costs two arms and a leg and is time consuming. With my Archimedes and this software, it is affordable, easy to do and, with careful choice of text and background colours, very good displays can be achieved. 4.8 Opening the box 4.8 Presenter Story comes with a well printed and laid out manual of a hundred A5 pages in a ring binder which also contains the one disc of software in a plastic holder. Apart from Presenter Story, the disc also contains two other applications called !PSfont and !PSroll. The disc also has a !Font file containing the Manager as well as Optima, Garamond and AmTypeWrit fonts and a sprite file as well as XAT’s Video module. 4.8 The structure of !PStory 4.8 On loading the application for the first time, the demo pages are also loaded and these give a very good idea of the power of the software and provide examples of layout that you can change for your own presenta tions. The manual also contains worked examples. 4.8 Paging is the key to the software as each page can contain a series of different items and after it has finished, you move on to the next page. Within each page a series of items can be drawn or animated and it is possible to include a user operated trigger on each item. Thus, if you had a series of, say, items and their costs, pressing a key would allow the next to appear below the one already on screen. This is great for animating text to a sound track or during a lecture. The components of the page can be: 4.8 • Text in different colours, mixed fonts and super and subscript with alternative (top bit) characters like ©. 4.8 • Pie Charts − 2D or 3D with removable segments 4.8 • Line charts in a variety of styles 4.8 • Sprites from a pool. These alone can be animated 4.8 • Beeps to warn you to press a key 4.8 • Logos drawn in the editor or traces which can be made around an image imported from the digitizer 4.8 • Maps drawn in the editor (two colour large area logos) 4.8 • Effects to determine how the page appears such as boxwipes, bounces and patterns 4.8 • Labels − to label charts maps and graphs 4.8 • Changes to the palette 4.8 • Triggers to put a pause in the display 4.8 • Four pre-set arrows as a graphic 4.8 • Border to set the screen edge colour 4.8 • Clear to clear the screen 4.8 • Background to set the back colour (which can be transparent) 4.8 These components can be in a sequence of different items which are drawn one after the other. Thus on one page it would be possible to, say, slide a sprite of a blue rectangle in over a transparent background, pop text over it, animate it on cue and then add a logo. Good eh! 4.8 Structure 4.8 The structure of the Presenter Story main application requires you to put your pages, logos and charts in three directories inside the application rather than in external directories although the sprite and palette directory is external. Each presentation you produce is copied onto a new disc from the master, so that each has its own copy of Presenter Story, and the requisite items for that presentation are imported from other discs or specially created. 4.8 There is a password security system which you may invoke to prevent other people altering the data. It is possible to output the screens directly to a printer or via a screensave file. 4.8 PSroll 4.8 Having created your pages the application Presenter Roll allows you to join them together in a particular order, the number of pages depending on the amount of memory available. My 1M machine manages four. The pages are joined bottom to top in a loop and the speed and direction can be altered. This can be very eye catching if not overdone. If you were a travel agent, one of these displays in the window could contain a lot of late booking holidays − estate agents could put houses for sale in a loop. Public buildings could create information displays which did not have the usual page wait associated with teletext-like systems. This also allows me to create a vertical “roller” of credits for the end of a video. I do this already as a “crawler” with XAT’s Video Utilities. 4.8 PSfont 4.8 This application allows you to change and to rescale the seven fonts used in !PStory. I keep a font pool on floppy one, and running its font manager makes all the pool available for use. If you save any changes to the fonts, and if the new fonts required are not on the Presenter Story disc, running !PStory after restarting the computer will cause the application to hang, so the fonts required must be copied to each presentation disc. This can use up a lot of space. You must remember that font display on a 1M machine is a compromise between speed and available memory. Sensible recommendations for FontMax sizes are included in the manual but I would also recommend reading the !Readme file you may have with your existing font manager. This file is not included on the PStory disc. Remember that you can only configure to Font Max2 and 3 to 250 pixels. 4.8 This application does the job but there is no on screen representation of how your rescaled font will look thus you have to approximate and then go into !PStory to see what it looks like and then come back to !PSfont to change things. As the applications are not multi-tasking, this is bad news if you are trying to create a title font on screen to approximate to a font on some sales literature and this wastes time. 4.8 Limitations 4.8 The first note of caution that I would sound is that Presenter Story is not multi-tasking as it takes over the whole computer to do its job but there are ways you can quit back to the desktop. I personally like the desktop environment and want to refer to other files whilst working with Presenter Story. More seriously, you can sometimes use the exit option from PStory and find that the computer locks up and needs resetting. 4.8 The second caveat is that its component editor for graphics is ‘unique’. I have yet to find a way of importing Drawfiles into the package which is a shame as I used to use this system in my videos and would like to update my archives. I am not really in favour of re-inventing the wheel especially as the manual commends you to edit any sprites you are using with !Paint or !Artisan and you can use conventional palette files. 4.8 There are some things I don’t like about the application structure. The filing references to logos, sprites and pages are purely numerical, although pages can be given names to identify them as you create them and you can page shuffle using these names. This requires a comprehen sive pencil and paper filing system of the elements used so that you can keep track of items for future use − it would be so easy for the page name you specify to be appended to the number thus passing this title to the disc filing window and still retaining a numerical sequence. 4.8 The colour selection in some parts of the page designer asks for input from 0-9 and A-F whilst background colour selection is in the range 0- 16. This needs standardising. If you want to choose 2D or 3D for a pie chart, you are asked to input either of the numbers “1” or “2” instead of the more logical “2” or “3” − pedantic points, I know, but points that could make the package use simpler. 4.8 That’s most of the moans out of the way. Designing pages of information is fairly easy. A new page is selected, the type of input required is selected from a menu and this input can then be positioned on the page. Sensibly for items like text, the middle mouse button centres the line of characters. This is great for centering lots of subtitles in an overlay box − you just write down the co-ordinates of the first line of text and keep the same “y” value for different pages. 4.8 Positioning manually, I found the box that represents the characters seemed smaller than the actual line of text and two or three goes were required to get it just right. I would like to see the provision of a grid overlay toggle as lining up different lines of text by eye in my case is about as good as my plastering! I did find that larger sizes of text did tend to “vignette” or slightly cut off at the bottom. 4.8 Conclusions 4.8 If you present information to others or are involved in video, you need software like this. There is little choice in this area of the market and while Presenter Story does have shortcomings, these can be worked round. The font presentation on screen is very good and the quality of imports help the user to create presentations that can have a distinc tive house style to match existing styles used by a company. I would prefer a DTP feel to create the pages but author Paul Reuvers of XAT is doing the usual balancing act between the quality of output and ease of use versus 1M machine memory limitations. 4.8 In my view Presenter Story is not yet the definitive presentation package for the Archimedes but XAT and Lingenuity have made a good first attempt. I would expect to see what I now regard as a highly rated package become even better to compliment its “business” price (as well as an upgrade path for us pioneers). I look forward in hope to a RISC-OS compliant version of Presenter Story 2 − especially now that software authors are seeing the power of other packages in a WIMP environment. 4.8 Presenter Story (v1.20) by X-Ample Technology is £169 +VAT from Lingenuity. A 4.8 4.8 Design Concepts’ Programs 4.8 Robert Chrismas 4.8 The Design Concepts programs are all priced between £1.00 and £2.00. They are multi-tasking RISC-OS applications, although Freehand puts a window over the desktop for time-critical drawing operations. Each application comes with a page or so of A5 documentation and includes a !Help file. 4.8 The programs are mostly tools to support larger applications. Some of the jobs these programs do could be done with other programs but they might still be attractive to people with only (only!) 1M of memory because these programs are memory frugal, 32K seems typical. The versions I saw were written in BASIC and even when I was not excited by the program, it was interesting to be able to look at the code and see how it was done. 4.8 FreeHand: With most painting programs you can hold down <select> to create a free hand drawing. Using this program feels like that, but it creates a draw file. You can set a high scanning speed for smooth curves with lots of points or lower for less points and therefore smaller files. The draw file consists of straight line segments and it can be reloaded and edited but FreeHand does not like ordinary Draw files. Some artistic ability is a benefit. £2.00. 4.8 Shade: Impression comes with a very useful Draw file called GradTint with a rectangle shaded from black to white in finer gradations than anything you could normally produce with Draw. This program creates similar rectangles between any two colours. Of course it is mapped onto the screen palette when displayed on the screen. For anything but greys you would need a good quality colour printer to see the effect properly. £1.50. 4.8 Fontlist: This outputs a draw file with examples of all your fonts. Each line says something like ‘This is Hobart’. It always lists all your fonts. £1.50. 4.8 Back2: This should provide a menu for the desktop background allowing you to load applications. Unfortunately ‘It requires considerable setting up before it can be useful...’, you have to modify application boot files (e.g. using Edit). It also allows a repeated sprite back ground. £2.00. 4.8 Speedo: This is a like ‘Usage’ on Applications 2 except that it gives numeric output. I enjoyed using this to discover the effect different applications had. £1.00. 4.8 Muncher: Muncher produces a constantly changing pattern in a window. This is a useful program if your Archimedes runs too fast. £1.00. 4.8 KeyCap: This allows you to preview an outline font at any size. It uses a constant sized window so you only see the bottoms of large characters. £1.50. 4.8 CountWord: Drag a text file to this application and it will count the words and the paragraphs. It can handle First Word Plus files as well as normal text. £1.00. 4.8 Mouse: Sometimes you want the pointer to move quickly, at other times you want a more sensitive response. This program adjusts the speed of the mouse as you move it, so slow movements are very accurate and fast movements cause the pointer to leap around the screen. You can adjust the levels at which the pointer speed changes. The program does not tinker with the interrupts. £1.00. A 4.8 4.8 Design Concepts’ Fonts 4.8 Robert Chrismas 4.8 If you noticed the Design Concepts’ advertisement in Archive 4.6 p17 you probably suspected a rip-off. Who sells ‘proper’ outline fonts for £1.50? More from curiosity than expectation, I sent for two fonts which arrived within a week. A couple of weeks later Paul sent me the whole range to review. 4.8 These are proper outline fonts, you can add them to your !Fonts directory or use them from the !MoreFonts directory supplied on the disk. 4.8 Appearance 4.8 There is a wide variety of styles from 5th century Celtic, through Goffik (Christmas card writing) to LCD (calculators and 70’s advertisers trying to look modern) and Ainslie (a pleasant modern script style). The more neutral styles like Sparta and Hobart will probably be the most used. None of the fonts is suitable for large quantities of text but they could be used for headlines or posters. 4.8 Used to excess, these fonts could produce documents which would frighten granny (if granny is a typographer). However some jobs do need a special look and one of these distinctive fonts could well be suitable. At this price, you can afford to use them with discretion. 4.8 Quality 4.8 When a font is displayed on the screen or printed it must be converted to patterns of pixels. The pixels will not match the outline exactly. If the letters are large, we do not usually notice any problems but if the letters are small, they can lack clarity and symmetry. To improve the quality of the letters, designers add ‘hinting’ data called ‘skeletons’ and ‘scaffolding’ (grim names!) to the font. Skeletons ensure that thin lines will always be at least one pixel wide, so they do not disappear. Scaffolding ensures that the letters have similar dimensions and that similar parts of the letter create similar patterns of pixels. 4.8 Creating skeletons and scaffolding takes time, which is why good quality fonts are usually expensive. I do not have any technical documentation on the various types of scaffolding lines, but I compared the Design Concepts’ fonts with the Trinity font used to print this article. In most cases, the Design Concepts’ hinting appeared to be less detailed and some seemed very limited but it is hard to tell how much scaffolding is desirable for less ‘regular’ styles. I felt that the fonts printed acceptably in small sizes. 4.8 Designers can save time by not defining all the characters. It is possible to have 224 definitions (ASCII 32−255). To be useful, a font must have definitions for characters 32−126 because these are the standard characters available from the keyboard. Characters 128−255 include alternative vowels with accents, umlauts, ligatures and special symbols so, for most purposes, a few gaps here will not matter very much. The Trinity font has 208 defined characters of which 157 have scaffolding. All the Design Concepts’ fonts have all the characters 32−126 and most have about 170 definitions altogether. 4.8 Some of the Design Concepts’ fonts have the same definitions for upper and lower case letters and, in others, the lower case is just the upper case reduced in size. Only Ainslie and LCD have clearly distinguished upper and lower case. 4.8 You need Font Manager 2.42 or later to use these fonts − none has a Postscript equivalent. A 4.8 4.8 4.8 4.8 Acropolis 4.8 Characters 156 Scaffolding 18 4.8 U/L/case scaled down 4.8 Ainslie 4.8 Characters 185 Scaffolding 116 4.8 U/L/case different 4.8 Celtic 4.8 Characters 169 Scaffolding 112 4.8 U/L/case all but 2 identical 4.8 Goffik 4.8 Characters 101 Scaffolding 90 4.8 U/L/case scaled down 4.8 Hobart 4.8 Characters 177 Scaffolding 116 4.8 U/L/case identical 4.8 Khut 4.8 Characters 170 Scaffolding 113 4.8 U/L/case identical 4.8 LCD 4.8 Characters 221 Scaffolding 191 4.8 U/L/case 6 different rest scaled 4.8 Sparta 4.8 Characters 167 Scaffolding 108 4.8 U/L/case scaled down 4.8 Subway 4.8 Characters 170 Scaffolding 107 4.8 U/L/case scaled down 4.8 4.8 4.8 4.8 The table shows how many characters are defined in each font, and how many have scaffolding. FontFix from Shareware 38 was used to find these statistics. FontFix does not measure quality and it counts the logo which many designers include as a normal character. The table also compares the upper and lower case characters. 4.8 4.8 4.8 hinting comparison 4.8 4.8 Celtic from Design Concept 4.8 4.8 Trinity Medium 4.8 4.8 converting an outline to pixels 4.8 4.8 Careware Disc Nº7 4.8 John Oversby 4.8 Careware Disc Nº7 is packed with applications and examples. Most come with Help text files which should be read before use. 4.8 !DrawLink 4.8 Using a text area in !Draw can be tedious since effects such as right, left or full justification, number of columns, font type, can only be edited in !Edit. This means that !Draw should be used alongside !Edit if text areas are required. !Drawlink allows text, in ASCII format, to be linked to a standard header for use in !Draw. The package is used from the Command Line (F12 − star prompt) and the input file and output file names must be specified. I found this unhelpful and prefer to use pre- prepared text files, under such names as ‘left-just’ or ‘2-col’ in clear directories. 4.8 !DrawCGM 4.8 !DrawCGm is a Utility for converting Acorn Draw files to CGM Computer Graphics Metafiles which may be imported into Lotus FreeLance and other Graphics tools on the PC. I did not have an opportunity to test this. 4.8 !FontEd 4.8 After using this to modify some of the characters in one of my outline fonts, I realised how time-consuming the production of a new font would be. Use it to convert a character into a !Draw path, so that it can be rotated. Even better, use !Draw1½ (S/W 34) which does the job very well and with greater ease. 4.8 !MakeGIF and !Translator 4.8 !Translator converts sprites from many formats, including Amiga, Atari and ProArtisan compressed forms, and in different modes, to sprites for use in RISC-OS applications, in any mode you can normally use. Options include changing the palette, saving part of a sprite, enlarging or producing a mirror image. It will also take compressed forms such as GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) and convert these into Archimedes sprites. !MakeGIF does the change in compression and type. Typically, a sprite can be reduced to half its size in GIF format, allowing more pictures per disc. Many bulletin boards and PD libraries use GIF files to pack more information into each file. 4.8 BFonts 4.8 Fed up with the boring Archimedes font as used in the desktop? Here are twelve new ones including IBM and Giraffe (tall and thin!). 4.8 NEC 4.8 This contains a printer driver for the NEC P2200 printer for use in Pipedream, which I was unable to try, and !Chars, a neat application with its own window which helps you to choose characters not available from the keyboard such as © and µ and not defined on the keyboard when using word-processors or DTP programs. With the pointer over the character, press <select> or <shift> to enter the character. 4.8 Symbol 4.8 A Greek/Symbols outline font. 4.8 !FileUtils 4.8 FileUtils installs an icon on the iconbar. When you drag a file to the icon, a menu will pop up which lets you perform a * command using the filename of the file you dragged to the icon. Commands include *ScreenLoad for sprites, change file type, open application directories, stamp with today’s date. This is useful if you are not sure about using the Command Line or if the file has a long path name which would be tedious to type out in full. 4.8 !MultiPrnt 4.8 Drag files to this to be printed without your constant attention. Will multitask on text files but !Draw files and sprites need to ‘see’ !Draw or !Paint first so the printing takes over the machine. 4.8 !PCDir 4.8 This only works on 720K PC formatted discs but it does it pretty well. A disc icon appears on the icon bar. Place a PC disc in the drive and click <select>. A directory window (but not in the normal window colours) appears with the PC files, and extensions, in an Archimedes look-alike way. Files can be moved from this window, into RAM, onto a hard disc, onto an ADFS floppy, with sensible choice of filetypes. For example, a PC file with the extension .DOC will be converted into a text file on an ADFS disc. Files can also be dragged into applications. Take a PC disc with a text tile, load the file into !Edit, work on it, then save the changed file back to the PC disc. This version of !PCDir will not allow formatting. I have used this application with DTP to take information sent to me by those who use PC machines. Unfortunately, I can’t send them the finished product other than in printed form but that is their loss! 4.8 !PrBuffer 4.8 Provides a printer buffer of a size decided by you! 4.8 !Z88 4.8 A RISC-OS program to take information from a Z88, through the Archi medes, to a printer or a disc. It needs a special cable to attach the Z88 to the serial port. I am not able to test it. 4.8 !BasicMgr 4.8 This allows access to BASIC from the desktop. 4.8 !Dots 4.8 This produces Fractal Ferns programs. 4.8 !Jotpad 4.8 This Application is a desktop jotpad. 4.8 !Logga 4.8 Its aim is to record how long you do something over a long period of time, e.g. how many hours you use the computer each week. Pressing <select> starts the log and pressing <adjust> stops it. The file is it produces is text. Use !Edit to view it. 4.8 !WrongWay 4.8 Turns all the text on screen upside down (or correct way up if it was already upside down!) 4.8 LowMem40 4.8 This module provides a screen mode (40) which only takes up 8k which is great for backing up / copying discs. 4.8 Overall 4.8 Careware Disc 7 is excellent value, particularly as those who buy it support charity. A 4.8 4.8 4.8 Setting up the PC Emulator 4.8 Richard Wheeler 4.8 Over Christmas, my family acquired an A420 Learning Curve (plus printer). Every now and then the family lets me delve into the machine and set things up the way I want to. These notes describe how I set up the PC emulator. 4.8 When I first saw that the Archimedes had a PC emulator I was quite excited. At work I have a PS/2 which is LANed to a laser printer. I had a vision of taking Archimedes spool files to work to make use of the quality and speed of the laser printer (and also of bringing work home for evenings and weekends). As I came to read a bit more about the PC emulator, it all seemed rather ‘iffy’ − and set up was not something to be done quickly. This was especially so once I realised that the emulation would deliver XT speed which is distinctly like watching coffee trees grow. With 4 Mbytes of memory available, I wanted to do something which would give some sort of turbo boost even if only through a memory resident D drive. From the various bits and pieces that I read, I decided that a large RAM disc − say 2 Mbytes out of the 4 Mbytes installed − would be the best starting point. 4.8 One afternoon, I settled down to ‘do the deed’ and it turned out to be remarkably simple. These notes describe what I did and the few problems I encountered. 4.8 Detailed installation steps 4.8 Step 1 was to read the two articles by Bill Mapleson and David Wilkins in Archive 4.3 which were more than helpful. In general, I will only describe differences from these articles − particularly as David describes the more complex task of amending an existing PC environment rather than the simpler task of setting up a new environment. 4.8 Step 2 was to make a copy of the PC directory (as set up on the Learning Curve) onto a floppy. I will not explain where I went wrong in detail but I did need to recover files from this later on... 4.8 Step 3 comes from Archive 4.3 p9 (where it is also called step 3). I used !Edit on the PC.!PC. GenBoot.!Config file to give answers of N to ‘Always Kill Modules’, ‘Perform RMClear’ and ‘Perform RMTidy’. 4.8 Step 4 is a combination of Archive 4.3 p9 step 4 and p20. I used !Edit on PC.!PC.!Run2 to include my hard disc name for both disc partitions. For me, the line then looked as follows; 4.8 /<PCe$Dir>.!RunImage <PCe$Dir> .ROM adfs::Harddisc4.$.PC.Drive_C adfs::HardDisc4.$.PC.Drive_D 4.8 I originally followed the David Wilkins’ suggestion at the end of page 20 and tried to use <PCe$Dir>.Drive_C etc but this caused me too many problems. (The disc partitions are created in the PC directory and not the PC.!PC subdirectory which PCe$Dir is pointing to. Apart from a simpler line in PC.!PC.!Run2, I could see no benefit from moving the files down a directory.) About this time I had to use the floppy disk... 4.8 Step 5 was to create a standard PC environment with a 10 Mbyte C drive and a 2 Mbyte D drive, both on the hard disc. As I was perfectly happy to create a ram disc in megabyte multiples (2 Mbyte in fact) I had no need to modify !ADFSDisk as David describes (the thought of doing which scared me silly). I created the D drive first by running !ADFSDisk and answering ‘2’ to the size prompt. Surprisingly !ADFSDisk did not run from my Hard Disc and I had to use the PC Emulator floppy. Instead of continuing after the file had been created, I used <escape> and then renamed the Drive_C file just created, to Drive_D. Then I re-ran !ADFSDisk to create a 10 Mbyte Drive_C and this time let the process continue to set up the PC Emulator and DRDOS. Despite my prior reserva tions, this all worked as described in Acorn’s mini manual. The install formatted both the C and D drives so I had no need to use FDISK separately to format the D drive. 4.8 At this point I had a working PC XT − at last <delete> worked like a delete key should and, to my great surprise, <print> gave a screen print straight away. 4.8 Step 6 was to use Drive_D from RAM rather the Hard Disc. David Wilkins’ description of what to do, starting at the bottom of the first column of page 21 is excellent. My differences were that when I came to use !Edit on PC.!PC.!RUN I found that I had no MemAlloc relocatable module in System:Modules. Mine was in PC.!PC.Gen Boot. I set the RAMFSSize to 2176k [= 2048k + 128k]. Allowing 128k overhead may well be extravagant but I wanted to minimise the chance of problems. I also found that when I poked PC.!PC.GenBoot.!Runimage it was the numeric keypad which had to be used (in fact exactly as David describes but not what I originally did). 4.8 Simplifying PC operation 4.8 Once I had a workable PC, the next steps were to make it just that bit more useable. Where I work, it is standard to set up a series a batch files to initiate applications and a banner which lists the available applications. All this can be set up as follows 4.8 Step 7, from the C:> prompt create a new directory as follows 4.8 MD \PCAMS <return> 4.8 CD \PCAMS <return> 4.8 Step 8, for each PC application, use Editor (if using DRDOS) or Edlin (if using MSDOS) to create within the PCAMS directory a batch file to start the application. Typically, this will be three commands. The first prevents commands being echoed to the screen, the second changes to the application directory and the third invokes the application through (as we will see below) another batch file. For example, I have IBM’s Display-Write 4 wordprocessor installed, so I created the file D4.BAT − the BAT file extension indicating a batch file. This contains the commands 4.8 ECHO OFF 4.8 MOUSE 4.8 CD \DW4 4.8 DW4 4.8 The additional MOUSE command is to invoke the mouse driver so that I can use the Archimedes mouse from within DisplayWrite 4. 4.8 Step 9 is to use Editor to create a banner file (in directory PCAMS) which will list the batch files set up. Mine is in file HELLO.DAT and looks something like 4.8 ************************************************ 4.8 * * 4.8 * Personal Computer Access Services * 4.8 * ————————————————- * 4.8 * * 4.8 * D4 DisplayWrite 4 * 4.8 * * 4.8 * FS Frost & Sulivan Expert System Examples * 4.8 * * 4.8 * Use RESET to return to an empty * 4.8 * Archimedes Desktop * 4.8 * * 4.8 ************************************************ 4.8 This shows that I have not had time to set up many PC applications yet! 4.8 In order to display the banner, the following commands are used: 4.8 CD \PCAMS 4.8 CLS 4.8 TYPE HELLO.DAT 4.8 These need to be added to the end of AUTOEXEC.BAT so the banner displays when the PC Emulator is entered. My AUTOEXEC .BAT now looks like: 4.8 @ECHO OFF 4.8 REM The DRDOSBEG and DRDOSEND labels tell the SETUP program which 4.8 REM statements it should process. Put any additional statements for 4.8 REM DR DOS between these two labels. Any other statements e.g. for 4.8 REM other operating systems, should be placed outside the labels. 4.8 :DRDOSBEG 4.8 PATH C:\;C:\DRDOS 4.8 APPEND C:\DRDOS 4.8 KEYB UK+ 4.8 VERIFY OFF 4.8 PROMPT $P$G 4.8 CD \PCAMS 4.8 CLS 4.8 TYPE HELLO.DAT 4.8 :DRDOSEND 4.8 (My other change in AUTOEXEC.BAT is to include the current directory in the command line prompt. I find this invaluable when working across many directories). 4.8 Displaying the banner when each application terminates is simpler to achieve than to describe! If the application is normally started simply by running an executable program then the process is straightforward. Create the batch file invoked from the PCAMS directory (in the example above this would be C:\DW4\DW4.BAT) to invoke the application executable and then the three commands described above. However, if the application is normally started by a batch file (which may then invoke further nested batch files − as is the case with Displaywrite 4) the three commands have to be included at the end of the final batch file − a bit of searching may be required to find the correct place but it is not usually too hard. As an example 4.8 ECHO OFF 4.8 CLS 4.8 REM RELEASE 1.0 4.8 REM MODE LPT1:,,P 4.8 CD >C:\DW4\DW4ODIR.BAT 4.8 ECHO Insert a diskette for storing documents in drive A: 4.8 PAUSE 4.8 A: 4.8 CD >C:\DW4\DW4DDIR.LST 4.8 C: 4.8 CD \DW4 4.8 DW4PG C:\DW4\PROFILE.PRF,,C:\DW4,,C 4.8 C: 4.8 CD C:\DW4 4.8 REM IF NOT EXIST DW4ODIR.BAT GOTO LABEL1 4.8 REM DW4ODIR 4.8 REM :LABEL1 4.8 CD \PCAMS 4.8 CLS 4.8 TYPE HELLO.DAT 4.8 What next? 4.8 There are a number of things I have yet to do with the PC emulator. (These include configuring a printer driver, making worthwhile use of the RAM disk and, if I get really adventurous, doing some PC based comms). Depending on the time I am allowed, the success I achieve and the reception this article receives, I will let you know all about my experiences. A 4.8 4.8 International Hangman 4.8 Ashley Bowden 4.8 Micro-Aid have produced a version of the well-known word game, hangman, aimed at pupils and students learning languages. The game is played in much the usual way although the word to be guessed can be in a chosen foreign language. There are twenty-five of these to choose from including the more exotic Malay and Chinese as well as most European languages. 4.8 The game has a number of variations. You have the option of a clue which is actually the translation of the word. So, for example, you can try to guess an English word, with its French equivalent as the clue, or vice versa. You can elect not to have the clue, although the international flavour is lost if you end up just guessing an English word without it. 4.8 There is a slightly mystifying scoring system. I could find no explana tion on the instruction sheet or in the program and I ended up with a negative score after some (deliberately) bad play. 4.8 Each language has a list of word pairs stored in an !Edit file. This can be amended and a facility exists for the user to add a new language. Files containing English synonyms and antonyms are included so the game is not restricted purely to foreign languages. 4.8 Unfortunately, only capital letters are used in the game and so there are no accents. Many language teachers I know find this aspect of computer programs rather off-putting since they wish to reinforce the correct use of accents. 4.8 The program makes little use of the Archimedes’ potential. It is rather odd being presented with a MODE 7 title screen followed by a routine to choose your language using the mouse and a system of sub-menus. What is worse is that the main game screen is also in MODE 7. This is really unforgivable and it indicates clearly that the program is just a partial rewrite of the original BBC version. There are also a couple of small bugs in the code on my review copy. At a price of £10.75 +VAT the game is not attractively priced and one feels that it should perhaps have stayed with the BBC where it obviously belongs. A 4.8 4.8 4.8 Mark Drayton 4.8 This disc is a compilation of many various Public Domain titles; some applications, demonstrations, and several games. One of the five directories on the disc contains text files concerning most of the programs on the disc. Some are detailed instructions and others simply state the version number and author. Careware 5 is available through Norwich Computer Services for £6.00. 4.8 Applications 4.8 In the ‘Apps’ directory reside four applications and four directories containing useful files and some ‘UserData’ to use with the applications. 4.8 !ChartDraw (V. 1.00) − This allows you to enter figures under a specified label which the program will then present as either piechart, linegraph or a stacked/grouped barchart. The presentation in each form is quite flexible, allowing you to select horizontal or vertical bargraphs, or hatched or solid fills for example. This application is fully RISC-OS compatible and is superbly presented, with detailed instructions. There is no facility within the program to print out a graph, although an option is provided to save the whole screen as a sprite, so it can be printed out using an art package such as !Paint. Some demonstration files are provided within the UserData directory. Note: Version 2.00 (Nov. 1990) is now available, incorporating a print facility and several other improvements. It was included on the ArchivePD ‘freebie’ disc last month. Perhaps someone at NCS will update the version on the Careware disc? (’Tis done! Ed.) 4.8 !Designer − This small program enables the user to edit/design BBC (system) fonts, which are completely ‘stand alone’. Although the program is devoid of any instructions, it is very simple to use. Four BBC fonts are supplied in the UserData directory. 4.8 !KeyStrip (V. 1.00) − This is the best Keystrip generator program for the Archimedes I have yet encountered. It caters for any function key and the <print> key, plus either <ctrl> or <shift>. You can print directly from the program, which is set up to drive an Epson FX80 compatible, although code is supplied to drive an Epson LQ800 compat ible. From the same author as !ChartDraw, it is also easy to use and well presented with copious instructions, and runs from the RISC-OS desktop. Some useful demonstrations are supplied. 4.8 NewModes − Created with The Data Store’s mode make utility, they provide extra big screens, in both 16 and 256 colours. The dimensions are as follows : 4.8 Mode Text Colours 4.8 40 156*36 16 4.8 41 156*36 256 4.8 42 92*36 16 4.8 43 92*36 256 4.8 They are selectable in the normal way and are nice to use in the Desktop. 4.8 PrintBuf − A relocatable module provides the following commands : *Buffer [<size>[k]], *NoBuffer and *Flush. It enables you to print documents seemingly instantly and continue, by acting as a support buffer to the printer. Setting this up is a little tricky but full instructions are provided. 4.8 QLUtils − Three programs are supplied, QLMod − a module which loads Sinclair QL screens in mode 9; QLreader − program which reads QL discs; QLScrConv − program which uses QLMod to convert QL screens into sprite files. Two QL screens are provided for experimentation. Only useful if you are unlucky enough to own a Sinclair QL. 4.8 !Teletext − A utility to create teletext style screens. Very easy to use and well presented. Instructions are incorporated into the program. Use !KeyStrip to print out a key strip (supplied). The function keys are utilised to change colour, and for other operations. Why an Archimedes owner would wish to use this form of presentation is beyond me, but if you did, I’m sure this would suit your needs adequately. Beware: you must reset the computer to escape the program’s clutches!! 4.8 Demos 4.8 There are two demonstrations, both from Noah Professional. One displays 32,768 colours, (pretty but boring), the other incorporates a spectrum analyser, whooshing stars, music and the inevitable small scrolly text. It does a good impression of an Amiga on exit, (why?). However, I have seen much, much better. 4.8 Games 4.8 !Poker − This is a fairly accurate and detailed game, which, (to the best of my gambling knowledge), incorporates all of the known variants and rules. Quite acceptable graphics. Player-computer games are possible. NOTE: No instructions are supplied !! A lot safer than the gee-gees... 4.8 !Quartet − A desktop version of “Tetris”, which involves packing falling shapes into a bin. Quite addictive and frustrating. (Ali is addicted to it! Ed.) It installs on the icon bar, so bringing up yet another game is far too easy. Instructions supplied. RISC-OS only. Guaranteed to distract you from your work. 4.8 !Simon − A simulation of the once popular hand held game of the same name, designed to be a test of observation and memory. Full instructions supplied. Levels of difficulty are selectable. Good fun. 4.8 KX_P1124 − This directory contains information and configuration files for Epson LQ/SQ printers, and some First Word Plus printer drivers. Not owning the said hardware, I am not able to comment on this material. 4.8 Conclusion 4.8 This disc offers a lot of varied Public Domain material and is tremen dous value for money. It is well documented and packed full to the brim. Given all this and the opportunity to contribute to charity, what are you waiting for? A 4.8 4.8 Careware Disc Nº 5 4.8 4.8 4.8 A3000 Expansion Card Case 4.8 Tony Colombat 4.8 During the last month, the school at which I teach was the happy recipient of a Laser Direct printer and ten A3000’s supplied by local business firms. The Laser Direct has a podule which needs to be fitted to the back of one of the A3000s and I was staggered to find that no cover or protection was supplied by Computer Concepts. Certainly, the printer could not be used with a bare podule sticking out the back and inquiring pupil hands all too ready to explore pcb’s. 4.8 To overcome the problem I decided to order an “Expansion Card Case” from PRES and, within 36 hours of telephoning the order, the case arrived. 4.8 I had never seen a podule case before and was surprised at how well everything fitted together. The case is made of metal in the familiar cream of an A3000 and is slightly wider, though no longer, than an expansion podule. There is plenty of room above and below the podule to avoid any possibility of the pcb touching the case. At the computer end of the case is a lip which slides into the grooves under the A3000 and two screw holes and screws that match those above the expansion interface on the A3000. Once fitted, a sturdy, though ungainly, cover for the podule is available. 4.8 The difficult bit now begins because, with the case in place, one has to try and fit the podule into the expansion interface with the cover stopping any attempts to line up the podule pins. I found the best method was to tip the computer onto its front end and lower the podule vertically down onto the interface. Once the correct position has been achieved and the podule pushed home a good fit is made. I then found the second problem, neither firms had supplied screws for fitting the podule to the expansion case. I ended up temporarily fixing the two together with nylon clips. 4.8 Summary 4.8 Anyone expanding their A3000’s potential with accessories such as a scanner or laser printer which require a podule would do well to check whether they are supplied with a podule cover. If not, and they are sure that they are not going to fit further podules for a hard disc etc, they will find it worthwhile to contact PRES for their A3000 Expansion Card Case. (A3K3) at £15+VAT. A 4.8 4.8 4th Dimension P.O. Box 4444, Sheffield. (0742-700661) 4.8 Abacus Training 29 Okus Grove, Upper Stratton, Swindon, Wilts, SN2 6QA. 4.8 Acorn Computers Ltd Fulbourn Road, Cherry Hinton, Cambridge, CB1 4JN. (0223-245200) (210685) 4.8 Ace Computing (p4) 27 Victoria Road, Cambridge, CB4 3BW. (0223-322559) (69180) 4.8 Atomwide Ltd (p24) 23 The Greenway, Orpington, Kent, BR5 2AY. (0689-838852) (896088) 4.8 Base5 (p32) PO Box 378, Woking, Surrey GU21 4DF. 4.8 Beebug Ltd 117 Hatfield Road, St Albans, Herts, AL1 4JS. (0727-40303) (60263) 4.8 Clares Micro Supplies 98 Mid dlewich Road, Rudheath, Northwich, Cheshire, CW9 7DA. (0606-48511) (48512) 4.8 Colton Software (p35) 149-151 St Neots Road, Hardwick, Cambridge, CB3 7QJ. (0954-211472) (211607) 4.8 Computer Concepts (p30/31) Gaddesden Place, Hemel Hempstead, Herts, HP2 6EX. (0442-63933) (231632) 4.8 Contex Computing 15 Woodlands Close, Cople, Bedford, MK44 3UE. (02303- 347) 4.8 Design Concept 30 South Oswald Road, Edinburgh, EH9 2HG. 4.8 Lingenuity (Lindis) (p16) P.O.Box 10, Halesworth, Suffolk, IP19 0DX. (0986-85-476) (460) 4.8 Longman-Logotron Dales Brewery, Gwydir Street, Cambridge, CB1 2LJ. (0223-323656) (460208) 4.8 Micro-Aid Kildonan Courtyard, Barrhill, Girvan, S. Ayrshire, KA26 0PS. (0465-82288) 4.8 Micro Librarian Systems Staley Cottage, Ridge End Fold, Marple, Stockport, Cheshire, SK6 7EX. (061-449- 9357) 4.8 Minerva Systems Minerva House, Baring Crescent, Exeter, EX1 1TL. (0392-437756) (421762) 4.8 Morley Electronics Morley House, Norham Road, North Shields, Tyne & Wear, NE29 7TY. (091-257-6355) (6373) 4.8 Northern Micromedia Resources Centre, Coach Lane Campus, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE7 7XA. (091-270-0424) 4.8 Oak Solutions (p15) Cross Park House, Low Green, Rawdon, Leeds, LS19 6HA. (0532-502615) (506868) 4.8 Paul Fray Ltd 4 Flint Lane, Ely Road, Waterbeach, Cambridge CB5 9QZ. (0223-441134) (-441017). 4.8 PEP Associates 55 St Paul’s Drive, Chatteris, Cambridge, PE16 6DG. 4.8 Pineapple Software 39 Brownlea Gardens, Seven Kings, Ilford, Essex, IG3 9NL. (081-599-1476) 4.8 P.R.E.S. 6 Ava House, Chobham, Surrey. (0276-72046) 4.8 Ray Maidstone 421 Sprowston Road, Norwich, NR3 4EH. (0603-407060) (417447) 4.8 RESOURCE Exeter Road, Doncaster, DN2 4PY. (0302-340331) 4.8 Topologika P.O. Box 39, Stilton, Peterborough, PE7 3RL. (0733-244682) 4.8 VisionSix Ltd (p26) 13 Paddock Wood, Prudhoe, Northumberland, NE42 5BJ. (0661-33017) (36163) 4.8 4.8 4.8 Norwich Computer Services 96a Vauxhall Street, Norwich, NR2 2SD. 0603- 766592 (764011) 4.8 Is Archive a User Group? 4.9 Archive is not a user group, although we have always tried to keep that “user group feel” by encouraging readers to contribute their own ideas, articles, questions, small ads, contacts etc. We have also always tried to remain independent, as far as that is possible for a commercial enterprise. To this end, we have deliberately not got involved in developing our own hardware and software products even though we have the necessary knowledge and expertise to do so. This means that, hopefully, you can trust the reviews to be reasonably impartial. 4.9 Blatant advertising? 4.9 Another thing we have avoided is taking up lots of pages of the magazine advertising our own wares. However, we have found that many new subscribers don’t know, for example, that we issue a monthly program disc or that we have a huge PD software library, much of which is dedicated to raising money for charity (over £30,000 in the last 2 years). They don’t realise that we do Archive magazine binders or that we have asked a promotional company to make us some Archive mugs! (See Products Available.) So we have taken up a half page advert to make these things known. (Well, we are going to next month, but when I was pasting up this issue, I forgot to leave space for it!) 4.9 Hard times ahead? 4.9 Many businesses are finding things difficult in the current economic climate and Norwich Computer Services is not immune from these pres sures. There is always the temptation is to drop your selling prices in order to attract business away from other companies who are selling the same things. The trouble is that it means that other companies, to avoid losing business, may have to drop their prices too. This sounds great from the consumers’ point of view... but is it? 4.9 The problem is that if everyone cuts their margins, many Acorn-specific companies will not be able to make enough money to live on and may be forced into diversifying into other computers or giving up on Acorn all together. (I personally would rather go back into full time F.E. teaching than do that!) Also, those companies that do stick with Acorn will not be able to afford to employ as many (or as competent) technical back-up staff. All in all, this means less support for Acorn products and that is not in the consumers’ best interests. For companies to behave in this way is, I believe, both short-sighted and selfish. 4.9 Advertising Policy 4.9 We are, therefore, saying to companies wanting to quote cut-throat prices in our magazine that we are no longer prepared to accept their advertisements. We do not accept their argument that “So-and-so is doing it, so I’m only matching his prices.” Our only slight worry is that we may be accused of not being independent any more but we believe that what we are doing is in the interests of the Acorn market as a whole, so the decision stands. (In case you are wondering, we are not the only magazine that places restrictions on its prospective advertisers!) 4.9 Very best wishes, 4.9 4.9 4.9 Products Available 4.9 • 3D Chess − MicroPower have now released their new chess program and it’s in 3D. I don’t know how good a game it plays but the 3D display is very impressive. £19.95 from MicroPower or £19 through Archive. 4.9 • Animynd Life is a version of John Conway’s Mathematical game, Life. It has a wide range of features allowing you, for example, to load and save patterns, randomize, single step, set up various parameters etc. It comes with a library of around 70 shapes, some of which are quite fascinating to watch, and costs £20 from R.R. Thomas, 9 Oughtonhead Way, Hitchin, Herts. SG5 2JZ. 4.9 • Archimedes for the Anxious is a book by Alison Tyldesley published by RESOURCE, price £4.95. It is a “very-beginners’ guide” to the Archimedes “written in plain English” including explanations about using Draw and PenDown. 4.9 • Archive Mugs − We have just ordered some special pottery mugs for Archive subscribers. They are from the same company that did the promotional mugs for Acorn Computers and those who have seen the mugs they produced for Acorn will know that they are good quality. The design is basically the Archive logo from the front of the magazine in black and reflex blue on a white mug. They cost £3 each + £1 p&p, or £10 for four + £2 p&p. 4.9 • ArcComm 2 is now available from Longman Logotron. This is a fully RISC-OS compatible comms package costing £54 +VAT or £59 through Archive. It supports a range of different modems, has many different file transfer protocols and terminal types. It also has an extended procedure language which makes it very easy to, say, automatically log on to a bulletin board or to Telecom Gold and download mail and upload messages or files. (I am using it myself and finding it very good. Peter Gaunt, the author, is available on Arcade BBS, 081−654−2212, and was very helpful in getting ArcComm 2 working with my slightly odd WS3000. Ed) 4.9 • Arcventure − is an archaeological expedition into Roman Times. It is a simulation in which pupils take part in an archaeological dig with all sorts of interesting ‘finds’ to be made. £29.95 from Sherston Software. 4.9 • Boogie Buggy − Looks like a fascinating new game from 4th Dimension. You have to navigate a bug-like creature around the screen in an effort to neutralise the power of an evil monster lord without, yourself, being damaged beyond repair. From the advertising blurb, the graphics look good and it claims to be “the first quality game to use the entire screen”. £24.95 from 4th Dimension or £23 through Archive. 4.9 • Broadcast Loader − Educational Econet users will be pleased to hear about Acorn’s new ‘Broadcast Loader’ which greatly reduces the time taken for a class of pupils to receive the same file(s) which they request from the fileserver. A site licence costs £69 +VAT from Acorn or £75 through Archive. Acorn say it is “complementary to Acorn’s Econet and Level-4 File Server” and that it is “independent of the type of fileserver in use” and also that it is “compatible with Level-2, Level-3 and Nexus”. 4.9 • Chocks Away ‘Extra Missions’ from 4th Dimension is now available at £19.95 (or £19 through Archive). It provides you with 26 additional missions to fly, 6 of which are reconnaissance missions. 4.9 • Cross-32 Meta Assembler − Baildon Electronics have recently released, under licence to Universal Cross Assemblers, Cross-32 which will allow you to assemble programs from a wide range of microprocessors and micro- controllers. It can be driven from RISC-OS or from the command line. The rrp is £175 +VAT and it is available through Farnell Electronic Components. 4.9 • DrawAid is a utility costing just £10 from Carvic Manufacturing which allows you to create Draw files of complex shapes that have repeating patterns. It provides you with an environment which will allow you to use BASIC to generate your patterns. 4.9 • Guardians of the Labyrinth is a new maze-based adventure game − £3.49 from Soft Rock Software. It has ten user selectable mazes with the ability to load and save your game position. 4.9 • House of Numbers − an educational program with three levels of difficulty aimed at children aged 6 to 13. It is centred around a maths adventure/puzzle program. £22 +VAT from Chalksoft Ltd or £24 through Archive. 4.9 • I/O Box 3000 − Unilab have produced an interface box that plugs in the back of the A3000 and provides three user ports, an analogue port and a 1 MHz bus. One of the user ports has been put on a connector with the same number of pins as the printer port on the BBC Micro for backwards compatibility with hardware designed to hang on a BBC. The cost is £77.58 +VAT. 4.9 • !MapIT claims to be the first Genesis II application. !MapIT, costing £32 from HM Associates, analyses the IT requirements of the National Curriculum. The National Curriculum identifies IT as a cross curricular skill which must be delivered as an integral part of all ten statutory subjects to all pupils aged from 5 to 16 and !MapIT enables you to examine the contribution that IT can make to these ten subjects. !MapIT uses, and is distributed with, the Genesis II browser so you do not need to have Genesis II to use !MapIT. 4.9 • PenDown Outline Fonts Disc − Longman Logotron have now released a disc of outline fonts, ostensibly for use with PenDown but which can be used with any application capable of dealing with outline fonts. There are 12 fonts − all what you might call fancy fonts − for £18 +VAT or £19 through Archive. 4.9 • Removable SCSI Drives − The prices of the MR45 removable SCSI drives have dropped even further! We’ve been able to take a further £40 off the price bringing it down to £755 with an Oak SCSI podule and £555 without (or £735 with a Lingenuity podule) and the spare 42M cartridges are now down to £75 each. (We are now on top discount rate with the importers, so apart from changes in the dollar exchange rate, the prices should now be stable.) 4.9 • Sellardore Tales − is an ‘easy read’ adventure game for slow learners, priced £24 +VAT from Sherston Software. It covers National Curriculum English AT2. 4.9 • Shareware Nº40 − contains a simple card based database (ADFS only), desktop ARM code disassembler, 256-level greyscale picture editor, desktop optical character recognition, Blackjack for up to 4 players, Connect4 (2 player or player vs computer), single player high/low card game, horse racing game, sliding block puzzles, screen saver utility, desktop Mandelbrot generator plus a number of utilities: set the access status of files, file type guesser, simple calculator, various desktop file utilities in one program, German key caps, desktop reset button, extra desktop star commands, Fahrenheit <−> Celsius converter, desktop volume control. 4.9 • Training Courses − (I suppose you could say that these are “Products Available”.) Acorn’s Training Centre is offering a new series of training courses for applications programmers. The titles are, “Programmers’ Introduction to C”, “Introduction to Application Programming” and “Advanced RISC-OS Application Programming”. More details from the Acorn Training Centre. 4.9 • !X Terminal − Gnome Computers have produced software that will turn your Archimedes into a terminal to any type of remote workstation working under X 11. It supports TCP/IP over both Econet and Ethernet, can provide support for up to eight independent X screens and includes network security through DES encryption. !X costs £199 +VAT. 4.9 Review software received... 4.9 We have received review copies of the following software and hardware: Archimedes for the Anxious, Animynd Life, ArcComm 2, ‘Children’s’ graphics library from Micro Studios, DrawAid, 3D Chess, Pendown Fonts Disc, House of Numbers, Viewpoints and Arcventure from Sherston Software. A 4.9 STOP PRESS! − Careware Nº 13 is now available including DrawPlus (see the review on page 19). See Price List for details. 4.9 4.9 Here are two sayings from the bible. They are very short but very profound.... 4.9 Better a little with the fear of the Lord than great wealth with turmoil 4.9 Proverbs ch 15 v 16 4.9 In Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. 4.9 Colossians ch 2 v 3 4.9 4.9 4.9 Norwich Computer Services 96a Vauxhall Street, Norwich, NR2 2SD. 0603- 766592 (764011) 4.9 4.9 4th Dimension P.O. Box 4444, Sheffield. (0742−700661) 4.9 4mation Linden Lea, Rock Park, Barnstaple, Devon, EX32 9AQ. (0271−25353) (−22974) 4.9 Abacus Training (p17) 29 Okus Grove, Upper Stratton, Swindon, Wilts, SN2 6QA. 4.9 Acorn Computers Ltd Fulbourn Road, Cherry Hinton, Cambridge, CB1 4JN. (0223−245200) (−210685) 4.9 Acorn Training Centre Unit 5, Cambridge Technopark, 645 Newmarket Road, Cambridge CB5 8PB. (0223−214411) 4.9 Atomwide Ltd (p4) 23 The Greenway, Orpington, Kent, BR5 2AY. (0689−838852) (−896088) 4.9 Beebug Ltd 117 Hatfield Road, St Albans, Herts, AL1 4JS. (0727−40303) (−60263) 4.9 Carvic Manufacturing 3 Shingay Lane, Sawston, Cambridge CB2 4SS. (0223−834100) 4.9 Clares Micro Supplies 98 Mid dlewich Road, Rudheath, Northwich, Cheshire, CW9 7DA. (0606−48511) (−48512) 4.9 Chalksoft P.O. Box 49, Spalding, Lincs, PE11 1NZ. (0775−769518) 4.9 Colton Software (p18) 149−151 St Neots Road, Hardwick, Cambridge, CB3 7QJ. (0954−211472) (−211607) 4.9 Computer Concepts (p30/31) Gaddesden Place, Hemel Hempstead, Herts, HP2 6EX. (0442−63933) (−231632) 4.9 David Pilling P.O.Box 22, Thornton Cleveleys, Blackpool, FY5 1LR. 4.9 Gnome Computers Ltd 25a Huntingdon Street, St Neots, Cambridgeshire PE19 1BG. (0480−406164) 4.9 HM Associates 40 Hylton Road, Newton Hall, Durham DH1 5LS. (091−384−1874) 4.9 Longman-Logotron Dales Brewery, Gwydir Street, Cambridge, CB1 2LJ. (0223−323656) (−460208) 4.9 MicroPower Ltd Northwood House, North Street, Leeds LS7 2AA. (0532−458800) 4.9 Midnight Graphics 5 Victoria Lane, Whitefield, Manchester, M25 6AL. (061−766−8423) (−8425) 4.9 Minerva Systems Minerva House, Baring Crescent, Exeter, EX1 1TL. (0392−437756) (−421762) 4.9 Oak Solutions (p12) Cross Park House, Low Green, Rawdon, Leeds, LS19 6HA. (0532−502615) (−506868) 4.9 PEP Associates 55 St Paul’s Drive, Chatteris, Cambridge, PE16 6DG. 4.9 RESOURCE Exeter Road, Doncaster, DN2 4PY. (0302−340331) 4.9 Sherston Software Swan Barton, Sherston, Malmesbury, Wilts. SN16 0LH. (0666−840433) (−840048) 4.9 Simtron Ltd 4 Clarence Drive, East Grinstead, W. Sussex, RH19 4RZ. (0342−328188) 4.9 Soft Rock Software 124 Marissal Road, Henbury, Bristol, BS10 7NP. (0272−503639 evenings) 4.9 Superior Software Regent House, Skinner Lane, Leeds, LS7 1AX. (0532−459453) 4.9 Unilab Ltd (p17) The Science Park, Hutton Street, Blackburn BB1 3BT. (0254−681222) (−681777) 4.9 4.9 4.9 Computer Concepts 4.9 New artwork 4.9 4.9 Computer Concepts 4.9 New artwork 4.9 4.9 - Includes MEMC1a upgrade 4.9 - Large capacity OS ROM sockets 4.9 - No soldering required 4.9 - Four layer printed circuit boards 4.9 - Courier collection of your machine 4.9 2nd Mb - £225 4th Mb - £299 4.9 4.9 23 The Greenway Orpington Kent BR5 2AY Tel 0689 838852 Fax 0689 896088 4.9 4.9 The Complete Upgrade Solution 4.9 4.9 - Uses only eight RAM devices 4.9 - User upgradeable from 1 to 4 Mb 4.9 - Four layer printed circuit board 4.9 - Low power consumption 4.9 - Available without RAM devices 4.9 Bare card - £35 2nd Mb - £56 4th Mb - £159 4.9 4.9 - New series Aleph One ARM3 4.9 - 3 to 4 times performance increase 4.9 - Surface mount technology 4.9 - Four layer printed circuit board 4.9 - Courier collection of your machine 4.9 ARM 3 upgrade - £399 4.9 4.9 - Uses only eight RAM devices 4.9 - Suitable for A440, A400/1 & R140 4.9 - Fully RISC OS compatible 4.9 - Four layer printed circuit boards 4.9 - Courier collection of your machine 4.9 8 Mb upgrade - £749 4.9 4.9 - Increases resolution with all Multiscan monitors 4.9 - Doubles desktop work area 4.9 - Custom modes for Taxan and Eizo monitors 4.9 - Suitable for all Archimedes computers 4.9 - Free with any multiscan monitor from Atomwide 4.9 Atomwide VIDC Enhancer - £29 4.9 4.9 - All products are cross-compatible 4.9 - Combination deals available on all products 4.9 - Typical combination A310 4 Mb and ARM3 £675 4.9 - Dealer enquires welcome 4.9 - Phone for full details on all products 4.9 All prices exclude VAT at 17.5% but include delivery 4.9 4.9 - 400 series RAM upgrade kits 4.9 - Supplied with full fitting instructions 4.9 - 410/1 to 420/1 requires 1Mb 4.9 - 420/1 to 440/1 requires 2Mb 4.9 - 410/1 to 440/1 requires 3Mb 4.9 1Mb - £35 2Mb - £65 3Mb - £99 4.9 4.9 - Syquest removable disk systems 4.9 - Including One cartridge, drive unit and all cables 4.9 - 42Mb removable cartridges 4.9 - High-flow fan fitted for improved cooling 4.9 - Please phone for prices on other SCSI related products 4.9 Atomwide Syquest drive unit - £470 42Mb disks - £64 4.9 4.9 Hints and Tips 4.9 • Beware spaces − There is a problem with spaces at the end of OS variables: 4.9 If you include in a !Run file code such as the following: 4.9 Set ThisApp$Dir <Obey$Dir> 4.9 Run <ThisApp$Dir>.!RunImage 4.9 then beware that you don’t include a space at the end of the first line! If you do, the space will be included in the definition of ThisApp$Dir and the second line will cause a “Bad File Name” error. Hugh Eagle. 4.9 • PC emulator with an ARM3 − The default boot-up process for the ARM3 performs an RMClear command, killing all RAM resident modules including, in particular, the module that drives the ARM3. So, in order, to get the PC emulator to take advantage of the ARM3‘s extra speed you need to alter the line in !PC.Genboot.!Config immediately after the one that reads “Perform RMClear?” from “Y” to “N”! (Thanks to Martin Coulson of Atomwide for this advice.) Hugh Eagle 4.9 • Printer tips − You can alter the halftone density by editing the PrData file within your printer driver (see Archive 4.6 for an example of how to find this). For instance, PrinterLJ has lines such as: 4.9 pxres_halftone:300/8 4.9 pyres_halftone:300/8 4.9 so each halftone dot is actually formed of a matrix of 8x8 dots, giving a halftone density of 300/8=37.5 dpi. This gives a very coarse effect but can produce 65 different grey levels. Altering the lines to: 4.9 pxres_halftone:300/6 4.9 pyres_halftone:300/6 4.9 gives “only” 37 grey levels and a dot pitch of 50 dpi. Experiment to see what suits your printer best. 4.9 A word of caution. I used !Draw to produce some PCB artwork, printed it out using !PrinterLJ on a DeskJet Plus and sent it off... Disaster! The size was OK across the width but was 1.5% too small along the length of the paper, as was discovered when the finished circuit boards came back. I’d previously had no trouble using an Epson-compatible printer, so it may be something to do with the friction feed on the HP slipping, or perhaps a slightly thicker paper would have helped. Anyway, if your hard copy must be accurate, then check it! Jonathan Oakley, Cambridge. 4.9 • Printing * command output − Ever since I got my LaserDirect I have been laboriously printing the results of *Status, *Dump, etc. by directing the output to a file and then printing the file (while bemoaning the loss of the <Ctrl-B>, etc. facility à la BBC). However, I have just realised that it is easier (and much more in keeping with Acorn’s RISC-OS standards, I am sure) to open a Task Window in !Edit, enter the * command (which puts its output in the window) and then print the contents of the window by “saving” to the printer driver icon. In other words, click <menu> on the !Edit icon on the icon bar and use Create − New Task window. This presents you with a new window with a * ready for a command. Type in the command whose output you want listing, say, *STATUS. When the listing has finished, click on the window with <menu> and go Edit − Save and drop the text file produced onto your printer icon. Easy! (Then close the window, answering ‘Yes’ to ‘Kill and close’.) Hugh Eagle 4.9 • Printing via a RISC-OS printer driver from a BASIC program − Have you ever wondered why your computer has a button called “Print” that doesn’t seem to do anything of the sort? 4.9 At last, applications seem to be appearing that recognise that pressing the <Print> key is rather an intuitive way of printing (Impression and Poster are two examples). Also, I have discovered that RISC-OS printer drivers are not nearly as fearsome as the PRM makes them seem and it is actually quite easy to incorporate into your own program’s printing routines which are activated by ... wait for it ... the <Print> key. Amazing! 4.9 Take the Painting application from the original Arthurian Welcome disc, for instance. We still use this in my family because it is so simple, but it has always (incredibly) lacked a printing facility. To rectify this, proceed as follows: 4.9 Put this line near the beginning of the program (e.g. immediately after PROCdesktop (at about line 200): 4.9 PROCPrintSetup(110000) 4.9 Note: 110,000 bytes is big enough to allow the program to run in mode 20. 55,000 would be enough for mode 12. 4.9 Put this line in the WimpPoll loop (e.g. immediately after the ENDCASE statement at around line 400): 4.9 IF INKEY-33 THEN PROCPrint(162,232,1274,972) 4.9 Note: INKEY-33 is the crucial function that recognises whether the <Print> key is being pressed. 4.9 Finally, put these procedures at the end of the program: 4.9 DEF PROCPrintSetup(SpriteAreaSize%) 4.9 DIM SpriteArea% SpriteAreaSize% 4.9 !SpriteArea%=SpriteAreaSize% 4.9 SpriteArea%!8=16 4.9 SYS “OS_SpriteOp”,9+256,SpriteArea% 4.9 ENDPROC 4.9 4.9 DEF PROCPrint(X1%,Y1%,X2%,Y2%) 4.9 SYS “Hourglass_On” 4.9 PrintHandle%=OPENOUT(“printer:”) 4.9 SYS “PDriver_SelectJob”,PrintHandle% ,0 TO Old% 4.9 ON ERROR LOCAL PROCPrintError 4.9 4.9 MOVE X1%,Y1%:MOVE X2%,Y2% 4.9 SYS “OS_SpriteOp”,14+256, SpriteArea%,“TempSprite”,1 : REM Get sprite 4.9 4.9 DIM RectBlock% 15,Transform% 15,PrintPosition% 7 4.9 RectID%=1 4.9 BackCol%=&FFFFFF00:REM set background colour to white 4.9 4.9 REM X1%, Y1%, etc. are the screen coordinates of the area 4.9 to be printed 4.9 !RectBlock%=X1%:RectBlock%!4=Y1% 4.9 RectBlock%!8=X2%:RectBlock%!12=Y2% 4.9 4.9 REM No scaling or rotation required 4.9 !Transform%=&10000:Transform%!4=0 4.9 Transform%!8=0:Transform%!12=&10000 4.9 4.9 REM Put the bottom LH corner 1.5“ REM from the left AND 5” from the 4.9 REM bottom of the page 4.9 !PrintPosition%=1.5*72000 4.9 PrintPosition%!4=5*72000 4.9 4.9 SYS “PDriver_GiveRectangle”,RectID%, RectBlock%,Transform%, PrintPosition%,BackCol% 4.9 SYS “PDriver_DrawPage”,1,RectBlock%, 0,0 TO More%,,RectID% 4.9 WHILE More% 4.9 SYS “OS_SpriteOp”,34+256 4.9 ,SpriteArea%,“TempSprite” 4.9 ,X1%,Y1%,0 4.9 SYS “PDriver_GetRectangle”,, RectBlock% TO More%,,RectID% 4.9 ENDWHILE 4.9 SYS “PDriver_EndJob”,PrintHandle% 4.9 SYS “Hourglass_Smash” 4.9 CLOSE#(PrintHandle%) 4.9 ENDPROC 4.9 4.9 DEF PROCPrintError 4.9 SYS “PDriver_Abort”,PrintHandle% 4.9 SYS “Hourglass_Smash” 4.9 CLOSE#(PrintHandle%) 4.9 ENDPROC 4.9 Hugh Eagle 4.9 • Running one application from inside another If you’ve ever been puzzled by odd behaviour when you try to run one application from inside another, the following advice from Mark Neves of Computer Concepts’ Technical Support Department may help. 4.9 My particular problem arose when I tried to make sure that a printer driver was loaded by running !PrinterXX from within application A’s !Run file. The result was that application A failed to run and when I quit !PrinterXX, an error was reported. 4.9 The answer is that when you run a “sibling task” from another appli cation’s run file the sibling “takes over the current environment” until it terminates and only then does it return control to the parent task (in a manner analogous to a subroutine call). 4.9 The solution is to use the command 4.9 * Desktop <sibling task name> 4.9 rather than *Run. Hugh Eagle 4.9 • “Saving” data from one application to another − (This is another of those “obvious to those who know it” hints.) If you want to transfer data (e.g. text or a sprite or a drawn object) from one RISC-OS application to another you don’t have to save it on a disc from application A and then load it into application B; all you have to do is drag the icon from application A’s “Save” box (i.e. the window that appears when you choose a Save menu option) into application B’s window. 4.9 This works with all well behaved (“RISC-OS compliant”) applications, e.g. !Edit, !Draw, Impression, !Paint, !Poster, etc. and generally works for either the whole contents of a window or for selected items. Hugh Eagle 4.9 • Sprite plotting and colour translation − The ColourTrans section of the PRM (pages 1399 to 1424) includes references to a number of SWI’s (including, in particular, ColourTrans_SelectTable) which have to be called with R1 pointing to the “source palette”. Since, according to PRM pages 390−391, a sprite’s palette data starts 44 bytes after the beginning of the sprite, it seems clear that, in order to translate a sprite’s palette you simply call the ColourTrans SWI with SpritePointer%+44 in R1, doesn’t it? Wrong!!! 4.9 In fact, the palette data in a sprite appears to include 8 bytes for each colour with the second 4 bytes duplicating the first 4 (does anyone know why this is?) whereas ColourTrans expects only 4 bytes per colour. 4.9 So, before you can translate a sprite’s colours, you need to include some code on the following lines:− 4.9 PaletteLength%=SpritePointer%!32−44 4.9 IF PaletteLength%=0 THEN 4.9 PalettePointer%=0 4.9 ELSE 4.9 FOR I%=0 TO PaletteLength%-8 STEP 8 4.9 Palette%!(I%/2) = SpritePointer%!(I%+44) 4.9 NEXT 4.9 PalettePointer%=Palette% 4.9 ENDIF 4.9 Note: The palette data, if any, starts 44 bytes after the beginning of the sprite. SpritePointer%!32 contains the number of bytes from the beginning of the sprite to the start of the actual sprite pixel data. If this equals 44, there is no palette. 4.9 The point of setting PalettePointer% to 0 if there is no palette data, is that if the sprite has no palette then, in many cases, (especially if the sprite is defined in a 256 colour mode) it makes sense to call ColourTrans with R1 set to 0 since ColourTrans will then translate the default palette for the sprite’s mode. However ... 4.9 • Strange sprite colours − Ever since RISC-OS arrived, I’ve been puzzled by the odd colours which have appeared when some sprites have been plotted by various applications (including Impression, no less). I think that, at last, I’m beginning to understand why. Consider the following curious state of affairs: 4.9 Palette details are an optional part of the sprite data format. A lot of sprites are created by !Paint. !Paint, by default, creates sprites without a palette (presumably on the assumption that, having been designed in the Desktop colour scheme, they will be used on the Desktop.) 4.9 The PRM (page 1278) recommends that you should use the ColourTrans module for best results when plotting or printing a sprite. However, although ColourTrans knows how to translate from any given palette and from the default palette for any mode, it doesn’t seem to be equipped with any means of translating the standard desktop palette of a mode other than the current one. 4.9 Therefore, the best that applications can do when faced with a palette- less sprite is to tell ColourTrans to assume that the sprite was defined in the default palette for its mode. The trouble with this is that it is about the worst possible thing that can be done with a sprite defined to be used on the Desktop since, for instance, colour 0 which is intended to be white, will be translated by ColourTrans, working from the default palette, into black! For example, even Impression reverses the colours of its standard document icon. 4.9 So, what’s to be done? As far as I can tell: 4.9 The best advice is to make sure that every sprite has a palette. If this isn’t possible then, for plotting sprites on the Desktop, use Wimp_ReadPixTrans if a sprite doesn’t have a palette (this is the routine that the Wimp manager uses for plotting sprites as icons and seems to produce quite acceptable results on the whole) and save ColourTrans calls for sprites that do have palettes. For example, follow the above palette conversion routine with code something like this: 4.9 SYS “ColourTrans_SelectTable”,Mode%, PalettePointer%,-1,-1,ColTable% 4.9 IF PaletteLength%<>0 THEN 4.9 SYS “OS_SpriteOp”,52+512,Sprites% ,SpritePointer%,200,200, Mask%*8,Scale%,ColTable% 4.9 ELSE 4.9 IF NumberOfColoursInSprite%<63 THEN SYS “Wimp_ReadPixTrans”, 512, Sprites%,SpritePointer% ,,,,,ColTable% 4.9 SYS “OS_SpriteOp”,52+512,Sprites%, SpritePointer%,200,200, 4.9 Mask%*8,Scale%,ColTable% 4.9 ENDIF 4.9 If you’re plotting to a printer, “Wimp_ReadPixTrans” doesn’t help and I don’t think there is any straightforward, foolproof method. (It would be possible, I think, to create a block of palette data with the RGB values for the colours of the Desktop palette in the relevant mode and then feed this into ColourTrans, but this would be a rather tedious process.) Hugh Eagle 4.9 Impression Hints and Tips 4.9 • Adding fonts by using search & replace − As a mathematics and physics teacher, I use a lot of Greek letters and it is rather bothersome to have to work through all those menus to reach the effect “Greek” every time. Therefore, I use search & replace in a way which (at least in the Impression Junior handbook) is not documented: 4.9 I type the text, using the Latin equivalents of the Greek letters (“g- Quant” instead of “g-Quant”) then, when I have finished the text, I use the following: 4.9 Find: g-Quant 4.9 Replace: g-Quant 4.9 Impression does the rest. (Many thanks to Computer Concepts for the information!) 4.9 By the way, if you wish to find out how all the other effects are saved in an Impression document, there is an easy way to find out: Just take a document with lots of effects and save only the text story (“with effects”). If you then drag the icon of the saved text story onto the !Edit icon, the text will appear with all the effects in plain language. Jochen Konietzko, Koeln, Germany 4.9 (Wouldn’t it be easier to use <ctrl-F6> and edit the “Greek” style, go down to the bottom where it says “Key short-cut”, click in the box and press, say, <ctrl-shift-F9>, then OK it? Then when you want, say, “g- Quant”, you type “<ctrl-shift-F9>g<ctrl-shift-F9>-Quant”.... Oh, I see, Impression Junior doesn’t have styles. Oh well, nice try!) 4.9 • Cutting invisible text − If you have more text in a frame than will fit, you get the little red arrow which indicates that some of the text is invisible. You could obviously create a new frame, click on the over- full frame and then click <adjust> on the new frame but there may still be too much for that frame. So, is there any way of marking the invisible text so that you can cut it or copy it? The answer is that you simply use <ctrl-down> to move the cursor to the (invisible) bottom of the text the click <adjust> to indicate the upper limit of the area to be marked. Ed. 4.9 • Handy hint − If you use the ‘hand’ to move up or down through a long document, you are not limited in your movements to the visible page. In other words, if you keep moving the mouse up and up (by repeatedly lifting the mouse off the table) or down and down, you just keep moving through the document in the desired direction. (This is particularly useful if you are a trackerball user!) Ed. 4.9 • Importing text files into Impression − In the new version of Impres sion which CC have just sent me (version 2.11), I have discovered an exciting new concept in the Archimedes world − “the Return Stripper”!! 4.9 In the Extensions directory is a new loader module called “LoadReturn” which at last seems to deal satisfactorily with the importing of text files. Using this, I no longer have to load the file into !Edit then change linefeeds into carriage returns before importing. Nor do I have to suffer fixed line lengths in the imported text. 4.9 However, I do have two quibbles (some people are never satisfied!): 4.9 Double carriage returns are reduced to single returns, so spaces between paragraphs are eliminated (unless you change the style so that it leaves such a space − which I think is good practice. Ed). I feel it would be helpful to be able to set a “preference” to decide whether or not double returns are preserved. 4.9 Importing a text file now involves a somewhat tiresome sequence of message windows whereby I am asked to accept or reject each of the available loader modules in turn. I feel it would be helpful to be able to use the “preference” facility either to define which loader is used for which filetype or, at the very least, to determine the order in which the various loader options are offered to me. Hugh Eagle. 4.9 (All I did was to put the LoadReturn extension into the Auto directory in the Impression directory and now when I want files stripping, I use !Settype (Shareware 19 or 23) to change them to Acorn data file type (&FFD) and they are stripped automatically. Ed.) 4.9 • Labels & Tickets − Another way of doing tickets and labels is to define a new master page which is the right size for what you want to create (pretty radical, eh?). “Fit lots” still works, giving you multiple tickets per sheet, but you’re not restricted to 1% size increments which can cause you to miss the boundaries on sticky labels, especially where there are three or four across the page width. (Brilliant! Why didn’t I think of that? Ed. − see below.) 4.9 A similar technique works for cassette inlays. One way is to define a single master page 101mm deep and 288mm wide, divided into columns of 16, 12, 65, 65, 65 and 65mm; this format will fit two inlays to an A4 page (assuming zero border width, which will vary between printers), but you need to fiddle around with !FontDraw and !Draw (Or use Draw1½ − see below. Ed) to get text on the spine of the cassette. Starting with a page 288mm deep and 101mm wide gives you the spine text a sensible way round, but the four “body” pages are then landscape, which you may not want. 4.9 Another way is to split the inlay into two chapters; the spine has a 101mm wide, 28mm high master page, and the body pages are 65mm by 101mm, or vice versa if you want landscape. Then you need to do a bit of cutting and pasting by hand, as Impression won’t print individual pages sideways. This is the technique I ended up by using, printing at 141% then reducing the pasted-up result from two up on A3 back down by 70% to A4, thus enhancing the graphics halftones from 37.5 dpi to 53.6 dpi. I’ve included an example ... (Which we have put on the Monthly Program Disc. Ed) Jonathan Oakley, Cambridge. 4.9 • Labels & tickets − Ed’s version − I have played a bit with Jonathan’s ideas and developed them a little. I tried to create some labels (like the ones on our Shareware Discs etc which come as 24 to an A4 page) and found that his method worked very well. I created a master page that was 70mm x 37.125mm (which is 210mm divided by 3 horizontally and 297mm divided by 8 vertically). I set a border 3mm wide on all four sides because the Laser Direct HiRes can print up to about 2.5mm of the edge of the page and I wanted to have a simple line border around my labels. I put all my text on the master page including a page number so that I could have a serial number on the labels. I then closed the master page and created another 23 pages for my document by using <menu> Edit − Insert new page. I clicked 22 times with <adjust> so that the menu stayed on screen and once with <select>. I then pressed <print> and clicked on “Fit lots” and then “Setup...” and then “Ignore page border”. The printout which appeared was almost right but was 1mm too far to the right, 1mm too low at the top and the last label was even lower. (Thinks hard.... tries various things and then....) The printout was slightly too long so I created a slightly shorter master page − 70mm x 37.11mm. I tried to see if there was any adjustment on the laser printer but couldn’t find any so I went to the (new, shorter) master page, clicked on the frame and pressed <ctrl-F10> to alter the frame. In the position section, I simply increased X from 5 to 6 and reduced Y from 5 to 4 in order to move the text on the page 1 mm right and 1 mm up. Bingo! Every border on every label was almost exactly 5mm. 4.9 I also had a quick try with Jonathan’s cassette inlay printing and it is really very easy with his first method − I cheated though by using Draw1½ (Shareware 34). For the spine, all you do is create a new Draw1½ document, type in the text you want, change it to whatever font you are using, press <menu> − Special − Text to path and then <menu> − Save − Selection and drop the Draw file produced into the relevant graphics frame in your Impression document. Then use <adjust> to drag the picture round until it is near enough at right angles to the rest of the text (having decided which way you want it to face) and finally press <ctrl- F11> (Alter graphic) and set the Angle to exactly 90° or 270°. (If you can remember which way round 90° or 270° puts it, then there’s no need to swing it round with <adjust>.) Here is a bit of text that I have just inserted. It must have taken me all of 45 seconds to create the frame, type in the text, convert it and add it in! (Software to enable me to do that on the Mac cost me hundreds of pounds a couple of years ago!) 4.9 • “Running” an Impression document − In Alan Highet’s review of !Menon on Shareware 38 (Archive 4.8 page 48) he mentions that it did not work well with Impression documents since an attempt to “run” one of these caused a second copy of Impression to appear on the icon bar. 4.9 I have observed a similar phenomenon in trying to create a front-end for Impression which, amongst other things, opens a template document chosen by the user. Simply *Running the document results in the loading of a new copy of Impression regardless of whether one is already running. 4.9 So, why is it that double-clicking on an Impression document in a Filer window will load it into an existing copy of Impression whereas “running” it doesn’t? 4.9 Mark Neves of Computer Concepts’ Technical Support Department has kindly explained why this happens and has pointed to a solution. 4.9 The reason is that what happens when you double click on an icon in a Filer window is not simply that the document is “run”. First, the Filer broadcasts a Message_DataOpen message inviting other applications to open the document, and only if this message is returned unacknowledged does it instigate a *Run. 4.9 The solution is a fairly simple program on the following lines: 4.9 REM >!RunImage 4.9 TaskName$=“RunImpDoc” 4.9 : 4.9 PROCSetUpWimp 4.9 DocToOpen$=FNReadOSVarVal 4.9 (“Doc$ToOpen”) 4.9 PROCPollLoop 4.9 SYS “Wimp_CloseDown”,Taskid% ,&4B534154 4.9 IF NotAcknowledged% THEN OSCLI(“Run ”+DocToOpen$) 4.9 END 4.9 : 4.9 DEF PROCPollLoop 4.9 LOCAL mask%,quit% 4.9 NotAcknowledged%=FALSE 4.9 PROCSendDataOpenMessage 4.9 mask%=0 4.9 quit%=FALSE 4.9 REPEAT 4.9 SYS “Wimp_Poll”,mask%,block% TO reason% 4.9 CASE reason% OF 4.9 WHEN 17,18 : IF block%!16=4 THEN quit%=TRUE 4.9 REM Another task (presumably 4.9 REM Impression) has acknowledged 4.9 REM our request to load a file. 4.9 WHEN 19 : NotAcknowledged%=TRUE:quit%=TRUE 4.9 REM Our request has not been acknowledged. 4.9 ENDCASE 4.9 UNTIL quit% 4.9 ENDPROC 4.9 : 4.9 DEF PROCSendDataOpenMessage 4.9 !block%=256 4.9 block%!12=0:block%!16=5:block%!20=0 4.9 block%!28=0:block%!32=0:block%!36=0 4.9 block%!40=&2000 4.9 $(block%+44)=DocToOpen$ 4.9 ?(block%+44+LEN(DocToOpen$))=0 4.9 SYS “Wimp_SendMessage”,18,block%,0 4.9 ENDPROC 4.9 : 4.9 DEF PROCSetUpWimp 4.9 DIM block% &1000,errblk% 256 4.9 REM Taskid%=FNWimpInit(200,TaskName$) 4.9 SYS “Wimp_Initialise”,200, &4B534154,TaskName$ TO Version%,Taskid% 4.9 ON ERROR PROCError(TaskName$) 4.9 ENDPROC 4.9 : 4.9 DEF FNReadOSVarVal(varname$) 4.9 LOCAL temp1%,temp2%,length% 4.9 DIM temp1% 100,temp2% 100 4.9 $temp2%=varname$ 4.9 SYS “OS_ReadVarVal”,temp2%,temp1%, 100,0,3 TO ,,length% 4.9 temp1%?length%=13 4.9 var$=$temp1% 4.9 =var$ 4.9 : 4.9 DEF PROCError(TaskName$) 4.9 !errblk%=ERR 4.9 $(errblk%+4)=REPORT$+“ at line ”+ STR$ERL 4.9 errblk%?(4+LEN$(errblk%+4))=0 4.9 SYS “Wimp_ReportError”,errblk%,1, TaskName$ 4.9 SYS “Wimp_CloseDown”,Taskid%, &4B534154:END 4.9 ENDPROC 4.9 To use this program, simply set up the OS variable Doc$ToOpen with the full pathname of the document and run the program. Hugh Eagle 4.9 • Setting a style in an Impression frame − Question: how do I set up a blank frame containing a predetermined style (for instance, to hold the address of the person I am writing to, where I would like to use a different font from the one in the body of the letter)? If I put the cursor in the frame, then apply the style, then move the cursor elsewhere (or save and reload the document) before bringing it back to the address frame, and then start typing, the text comes up in the Basestyle. 4.9 Answer: If after applying the style, I type anything (for instance a couple of carriage returns) in the address frame then the applied style seems to be remembered and the address frame works as intended. 4.9 Caution: if I delete the entire contents of the frame the applied style is deleted too. So, if I want to blank the frame for reuse I have to remember to leave a carriage return or two to preserve the style. Hugh Eagle. 4.9 • Typesetting − We said we would try to find companies willing to do typesetting from Impression output. Here are two that we have found. If you discover others, ask them to send us details of their services and we will publish them. We are particularly interested in those that will take Impression files as such rather than PostScript files on MS-DOS discs. 4.9 The Type Station in Cardiff offers a full bureau service for bromide or film. You create PostScript files and either send them by post on an MS- DOS disc or send them c/o BT using a modem. For details, contact Elgan Davis on 0222−229977. 4.9 Focus Print in Aberdeen can do bromides (PMT’s) from your Impression files. Phone Alexander Bisset on 0224−592571 ext 211 (or 0224−593956 evenings). A 4.9 4.9 4.9 Oak 4.9 From 4.8 page 15 4.9 4.9 Comment Column 4.9 • Archway − I have recently received, from Simtron, a copy of their free demo disc for Archway. It’s an excellent demo which seems to give a good idea of the kind of results Archway can produce and, more importantly, how you use it. It is well worth a look for those who are interested in writing Wimp applications but have not yet got to grips with all the intricacies of the Window Manager. Hugh Eagle, Horsham. 4.9 • Equasor Update − Brian Cowan’s review of Equasor in Archive 4.6 did not mention the important Design/Apply feature, probably because he had a pre-production version. 4.9 Equasor can routinely produce expressions with super- and subscripts to the East such as However, the Design/Apply feature allows you design custom subscript positions (up to two per symbol) in any of 8 positions: N, S, E, W, NE, SE, NW and SW. Also, the N and S scripts can be centred over the variable or aligned left or right, and the three E and three W scripts can be spaced out horizontally from the symbol, and similarly the three N ones can be leaded (raised or lowered) by an amount you can set, applicable to the whole Equasor “document”. 4.9 The new structure can then be applied to a symbol and different structures designed and applied elsewhere. Here are some examples: 4.9 The first 3 atoms were designed using the Design/Apply feature, the fourth by a combination of that on the “H” and the routine subscript feature on the “e” plus a little kerning of the “2+”. I like Equaser very much, but my version (1.02) does have a few minor bugs. Steve Kirkby 4.9 • LaserDirect Hi-Res (Canon LBP4) − I hope you will publish the following comments to encourage anyone who may be wavering about whether to buy a LaserDirect printer. (I wavered far too long!) 4.9 Use with RISC-OS drivers − Absolute simplicity. It gives wonderful results (both with text and graphics, especially Drawfiles). It brings Impression to life and we can now actually see the differences between the various fonts! A joy to use. 4.9 Use with programs that don’t cooperate with RISC-OS drivers − I was quite concerned about how difficult it would be to use with programs such as First Word Plus or Lotus 123 on the PC Emulator. In practice, I have found it surprisingly straightforward: 4.9 (i) The LBP4 printer can be plugged permanently into both the Laser Direct card and the parallel port and can be switched between the 2 interfaces just by pressing a few buttons on the control panel. 4.9 (ii) With the help of the driver supplied on Careware 12, text printing from First Word Plus via the parallel port is totally straightforward. (Having said that, the question of using First Word Plus has proved academic because we have all rapidly become convinced of the advantages of Impression!) 4.9 (iii) Basic text printing from Lotus 123 and any “VDU2” (or <Ctrl>B) style printing (e.g. printing the output from a * command such as *DUMP or *STATUS) is also straightforward. The printer can easily be switched via the control panel between standard and “line printer” mode (i.e. 160 characters by 8 lines per inch) in either portrait or landscape orientation. Software control (via escape sequences) is doubtless possible but you need to buy extra programmer’s manuals to get all the necessary details. 4.9 (iv) While it is possible to use the parallel interface in this way, it is actually almost as easy to print to a file and then print that file through the LaserDirect RISC-OS driver (or via Impression for all the extra control over layout that it gives.) 4.9 Noise − After reading some comments, I had imagined my study sounding like an aircraft hangar with the printer’s fan competing with the computer’s for attention. In fact, the printer is scarcely audible most of the time and even when it is printing it is quieter than the computer. 4.9 Hugh Eagle, Horsham. 4.9 • Public key cryptography − A review of “The Public Key”, (a magazine specializing in public key cryptography) appeared in Archive 4.5 page 57. Issue 2 of this magazine is now available from: George H. Foot, Waterfall, Uvedale Road, Oxted, Surrey RH8 0EW. A nominal charge of £1.50 (EEC countries £2.50: Overseas air mail £3.50) is made to recover expenses in part − cheques payable to G.H. Foot. 4.9 New readers will require Issue 1 of the magazine and the disc containing the cryptographic program in addition to Issue 2. (Inclusive charge: £5.00, EEC countries £6, Overseas £7). 4.9 Alternatively, write to the above address for a free descriptive leaflet. 4.9 The magazine is produced as a hobby interest of the editors and is not a commercial venture. 4.9 The unique merit of public key cryptography is that it is a universal system allowing anyone to communicate securely with any other person without a requirement for any previous contact between them and without any necessity for a preliminary exchange of codes. 4.9 The program in the magazine will encrypt messages (including graphics) for onward transmission and decrypt messages which have been received, all in a very simple fashion. 4.9 Public key cryptography is an interesting application for the Archimedes computer which will have a fascination for many people and serve a useful purpose for others. 4.9 The underlying principles are described for anyone wishing to make a closer study of the subject but no special knowledge is required for the operation of the program. mmm mmmmmm 4.9 • Schema − Clares replies to the criticisms of Schema in Archive 4.8 p18... 4.9 a. The version of Schema to be released soon, does have the ^ operator. Existing users will be receiving upgrades. 4.9 b. Only the more common operations are provided on the function keys. Inserting and deleting rows and columns is generally only needed if you make a mistake in the design of your sheet. If you do, the facility is there to correct the error. 4.9 c. Schema is an extremely powerful package and far from having too many menus, it is remarkable that it manages to deliver so much power with so few menu options to remember. 4.9 d. Inserting a column to the left of Column A is only going to be necessary if you have set up a badly designed sheet. If you do make such an error, the program allows you to rectify it in the way described. It is better to do things this way than to add an extra menu option to cope with a rare situation. 4.9 e. VAT, NAME and ARCHIVE for example, could be strings or user names or macros hence the use of quotes to distinguish them. 4.9 f. The article talks about a scratchpad. There is no scratchpad in Schema. I think the writer means the entry window. This is a window which displays the contents of the current cell and allows you to edit them. Since the contents of this cell are displayed, naturally, before you can edit data in a cell you have to make that cell the current cell. Once you have clicked into the edit window, you edit your data exactly as in any other editing window in any other RISC-OS application. The mouse and the cursor keys act exactly as you would expect. 4.9 D Jackson, Clares 4.9 We have had quite a number of letters about Schema expressing a range of views both positive and negative although the balance is on the negative side. However, it seems clear that Colin Ross Malone Ltd, who are doing the programming, are committed to clearing up all the bugs and imple menting as many as possible of the facilities which people are requesting. (See also the comparisons between Schema, PipeDream and Logistix on page 27.) 4.9 • Tracer − Midnight Graphics gave one of our subscribers a copy of Tracer for review. Eventually, he returned it saying he couldn’t get it to do what he wanted it to and therefore he didn’t want to review it negatively. Another subscriber got a more up-to-date version from them and had a go. He actually wrote a review but it was rather negative as he wasn’t very impressed by what he managed to achieve with Tracer. 4.9 Instead of just publishing the review, we faxed a copy of it to Midnight Graphics to give them the right of reply before going to press. They said they felt that the review was unfair and pointed us to the fact that they had sold over 600 copies “and have received no negative comments”. They also faxed us a sample customer response form as “a sample from many satisfied owners”. It was from an IT co-ordinator and gave the simple response, “Excellent!”. 4.9 I have therefore refrained from publishing the review but would ask that if any of the “over 600” owners of Tracer are subscribers that they drop us a line telling us very briefly what they feel about Tracer. Thanks. Ed. A 4.9 4.9 Contact Box 4.9 • German bulletin board − ArcWorld is an Archimedes BBS run by Thomas Fischer. Ring it on +49−7191−23217 using 2400 baud 8n1. 4.9 • Norfolk Schools bulletin board − Star-Net is run from Eaton (City of Norwich) School by Paul Welbank. It is on 0603−507216 using 300 to 2400 baud (8n1). It is aimed mainly at schools in this area but open to others to call in. 4.9 • Wakefield is 100! − The Wakefield BBC Micro & Archimedes User Group is having its 100th meeting celebrations on the evening of July 3rd 1991 at Holmfield House, Wakefield. They will have a display of all the Acorn range of machines from the Series One, through the Atom to the A540 and R260. For further information, ring 0924−379778 or −255515 or −250764, evenings or weekends. A 4.9 4.9 Are you ... fascinated by the Archimedes? 4.9 Can you ... program in ARM Assembler? 4.9 Would you ... like to work in a small team at the forefront of image data compression? 4.9 4.9 If so, write to Bill Mullarkey at DB Elec tronics Ltd 4.9 4.9 Enthusiasm and capability are more important than formal qualifications. However, the employment package could include sponsorship for continued education at any level − elements of the work are sufficient for a collaborative PhD. 4.9 4.9 DB Electronics Ltd 4.9 Systems House 4.9 62-68 Strand Road 4.9 Bootle 4.9 Merseyside 4.9 L20 4BG 4.9 4.9 Competition Corner 4.9 Colin Singleton 4.9 A century or so ago, a puzzle was sold for a penny on the streets of London. It consisted of a peg-board with 36 holes drilled in a six by six square array. Lines were marked joining the holes, six lines horizontally, six vertically, and 18 diagonally, including all the short diagonals. The object of the puzzle was to place six pegs in six of the holes so that no two are connected by a straight line. 4.9 The eight by eight puzzle can be worded thus: place eight queens a chess-board so that no queen is attacked by any other queen. They could be placed on squares a4 b2 c8 d5 e7 f1 g5 and h6. This solution has the interesting additional property that no three queens are in a straight line, in any obscure direction. 4.9 This last feature is not a requirement of this competition. The problem is to find the number of fundamentally different ways in which the puzzle can be solved for n queens on an n by n board, excluding solutions which are rotations or reflections of others. 4.9 There is only one solution for n=4, two for n=5, and one for n=6. Please extend this list as far as possible. 4.9 The winners! 4.9 The January competition involved the calculation of e to 1000 decimal places, or as far as possible. I did not penalise those who submitted only 999 dp! The winner on speed, as usual, was Dr Riha of Leeds, whose program took 0.21 sec on an A540. This, I think, is clearly faster than the next best, 1.25 sec on an A3000. 4.9 The latter time was recorded by Andrew Wallace of Harlow, who wins the endurance prize for having calculated 1 million places in slightly over a week! His timings for around 100000 places were faster than those of others who actually carried out the calculation, rather than simply estimating the time. 4.9 No prizes for the shortest program, submitted by an entrant at Birming ham University, using an algebra package. Apart from a few control directives, the ‘program’ consisted of the expression to be evaluated, which is the single letter e! When you enter these competitions, you are supposed to write the programs. 4.9 The prize for the February competition (the Mastermind game) is also shared, between J R Thorn of Cardiff and Graham Jones of Durness. They both used essentially the technique I outlined but somehow managed to diverge on the third guess, thereby ending up with very different answers for the ‘most awkward’ secret number as defined for the competition. The pattern of progress towards this number, however, is very similar in each case and justifies a shared prize. The number is identified on the seventh ‘guess’. 4.9 Graham’s sequence of guesses is 0123 (leaving 3048 possible numbers from the worst reply) then 4567 (leaving 768), 1288 (170), 2619 (32), 9840 (4), 0034 leaving one, which is 8905. 4.9 Mr Thorn’s sequence is 0123 (leaving 3048 numbers), 4567 (768), 1488 (171), 6399 (30), 5990 (3), 2296 leaving only one possible, which may be 2692 or 2696, depending on the sixth reply. 4.9 The Snap problem in March produced three entries with a full list of numbers of ocurrences of 0 to 52 snaps. Fortunately they agreed with each other, which saves me having to work it out! I didn’t ask for the fastest, so the result is a three-way split between Dr Riha (fastest again!), Joseph Seelig of North Harrow and Cy Booker of Swanley. 4.9 Joseph also sent me (on disc) a full list for 208 cards, which took just over 7 minutes to create and involves 393-digit numbers. A reader in Holland related the puzzle to his experience in deciding who should buy Christmas presents for whom. Interesting. I first encountered it in connection with the inefficient secretary who managed to put all the boss’s signed letters in the wrong envelopes. 4.9 Congratulations to all the winners, especially the three new names on the roll of honour. A 4.9 4.9 Colton 4.9 From 4.8 page 35 4.9 4.9 Unilab 4.9 New 4.9 4.9 Draw Plus − A Much Revised Application 4.9 Barry Thompson 4.9 It was interesting to read the article by Tord Eriksson in Archive 4.8. It seems that he is using an earlier version of Draw1½. Jonathan Marten has now released version 2.0 and calls it Draw Plus. A considerable number of additions and refinements have turned this application into a very comprehensive page creation program. 4.9 Libraries 4.9 Imagine being able to create libraries of your most commonly used drawn fonts, electronic symbols and clip art or anything else for that matter. The library can be saved in a file, independent of any drawings, and the objects in it pasted into any drawing. 4.9 Layers 4.9 Objects can be created on up to thirty one layers. Layers allow related information to be kept together and completed parts of the drawing to be made un-selectable so that there is no danger of accidentally changing them. Information not needed for the moment can be hidden. 4.9 Magnification 4.9 Clicking <adjust> on the zoom icon in the toolbox gives a range of magnifications from 99:1 down to 1:99. An excellent feature of this is that, having selected an object, clicking <select> on the zoom icon means that the object that is magnified by zooming always appears at the centre of the window. 4.9 Beware though of zooming in at large magnifications on hollow objects like rectangles and circles − you end up looking at the white space at the centre of the them. Use the scroll bars to find the section that you require. 4.9 Background objects 4.9 Another feature, which is useful, is that objects can be set into the background where they become un-selectable so that there is no danger of accidentally changing or moving them. However, this feature may become redundant now that it is possible to draw on layers. 4.9 Lines 4.9 There are eleven different selectable line styles within the application and all can be edited to suit the user’s needs. 4.9 Extra menu items 4.9 The three icons at the right hand side of the toolbox are used for orthogonal movement of the cursor when creating objects, magnification selection and lastly grid lock. Clicking <adjust> over the last two icons bring up menus from which various options can be set. 4.9 Clicking <menu> over a drawing window produces an extremely comprehen sive menu. There is only space here to deal with some of the facilities. 4.9 Miscellaneous 4.9 This includes options on file information, printing, dashes, layers, set objects in and clear objects from the background. 4.9 Further options allow sprites, text areas or text in ASCII form to be saved. There is also an option in this menu which enables you to save your favourite preferences and default settings. 4.9 Settings 4.9 Two items of particular note are: show XY (cursor position) and a setting for automatic window scroll. 4.9 Create 4.9 This repeats some of the toolbox items with the exception of the polygon option, which has a slide off arrow allowing the number of sides of the polygon to be set (3 to 100 sides). 4.9 Select 4.9 An option is included whereby objects can be moved one place forward or backwards in the stack that they are in. 4.9 Edit 4.9 This menu contains items useful when in path edit mode. It has options to make lines truly horizontal or vertical and to straighten curves without changing them to a line. Another option allows curves that intersect to have their joining points smoothed. 4.9 Information such as the text and path styles, layer and dash pattern information, grid and zoom options is saved along with the drawing, and these items are restored when it is reloaded. 4.9 Text items 4.9 The usual features are incorporated including font name, style, size/ height, colour and background colour. What makes this section of the program more interesting is the facility of changing the text styles after the text has been typed and the return key pressed. How? Select the text then − Menu − Text Style − then change the feature from the menu that you want to change eg. font name, size, style or colour. 4.9 Special item menu 4.9 This menu option includes facilities which allow text to be converted to path objects, much as FontDraw and FontFX. Text converted to paths can be rotated, skewed, transposed, etc. A text explode menu option allows text characters i.e. words or sentences to be broken into individual parts. These can then be manipulated as individual text items to be kerned, aligned, arranged into vertical text etc. 4.9 Alignments 4.9 This feature allows objects to be aligned at their top, bottom, right, left or vertical or horizontal centre. Objects can be spaced out equally in the horizontal and vertical plane. There is also a distribute facility which allows the edges of several objects to be distributed evenly to their top, bottom, right, left or vertical or horizontal centre. 4.9 Bounding box 4.9 Lastly there is an option to draw a bounding box around an object or group of objects. This is a useful feature for drawing an invisible box around an object or group which contain thin lines. In some DTP applications thin lines disappear into the sides of frames and are thus not printed. 4.9 Key short cuts 4.9 Although most items can be selected by the mouse via menus, page creation can be speeded up by the many function key, ctrl+key, shift+key combinations. For example, Save Page is <F3> <return>, Save Selection is <Shift-F3> <return>, <ctrl-A> selects ALL objects on the page, <ctrl-J> brings up the alignment dialogue box and there are many, many more. One undocumented feature is that, after pressing <F3>, the Save dialogue box always appears under the pointer or cursor, pointing to OK so that you can either click <select> or press <return>. 4.9 Finally 4.9 As can be gathered from my comments, I am very impressed by this application. My first Capsoft disc (see Archive 4.7 p 13. Ed.) was created almost exclusively using this program and all of the later ones are being created using it and it can be thoroughly recommended. It seems to be a much faster program in operation than the original Draw supplied by Acorn. 4.9 I have used the various versions of this application almost every day both at work and at home since they were released. Included with the program is an excellent manual in the form of a text file in Edit format and several example libraries and draw files, including a huge London underground map. A 4.9 4.9 Help!!!! 4.9 • Armadeus sound sample distortion − When a standard relocatable sample module such as StringLib is played, SYS “Sound_Control” can be used to alter the pitch and volume. However, modules created by Armadeus suffer from serious distortion if this command is used. Does anyone have a solution? Jeremy Mears, 21 Collum End Rise, Leckhampton, Cheltenham, GL5 0PA. A 4.9 4.9 PipeLine 4.9 Gerald Fitton 4.9 PipeLine is many things to many people. It started, and continues, as this monthly column you are reading which appeared first in the October 1989. Later, I made the information available to a wider audience (i.e. those who were not Archive readers) by producing a quarterly disc. Although those who bought the first PipeLine disc (July 1990) were exclusively Archive readers, I now have many subscribers who bought a PipeLine disc first and, through it, learned of Archive magazine. These PipeLine subscribers are now Archive readers as well. 4.9 More recently, PipeLine has evolved into a focus for exchange of problems with, and ideas for, users of PipeDream − a sort of PipeDream User’s Club. We have built up a team of ‘PipeLine Helpers’ who are expert in different specialist areas (such as text, spreadsheet and database file conversion from ‘alien’ packages) which they are able and willing to support. 4.9 If you use PipeDream in a way that you find interesting enough to want to show others (and help them with their problems), please write to me (at the Abacus Training address on the inside rear cover of Archive) and let me know. What do you get in return? Firstly, lots of thanks (and new friends) from those with whom you correspond. Secondly, if you write up your experiences and I publish it on a PipeLine disc, you get a refund of the disc price and a free disc. 4.9 Paul’s hint 4.9 Yes! Paul Beverley is an ardent PipeDream user. Here is a partial solution to a problem that I have been asked a dozen times or more. Paul’s version of the problem (and his solution) is that he wants to identify those rows in a spreadsheet which have a column containing numbers lying between two values. He quotes as his example a sheet with a (long) column of numbers, column L, in which he wants to identify those rows which contain values between 499 and 501. The method Paul uses (slightly modified by me) is to insert a new column A (place the cursor in column B and use <Ctrl-F3>), place the cursor in the new column A and use <Ctrl-LFC> to fix it. Note that your old column L is now column M. 4.9 In A1 put the higher of the two values of the range (in this example 501) and the lower value (499) in A2; remember that these must be numbers and not text; use <F2> to enter a number or an expression. In the next cell, A3, enter the expression if(M3<A$1&M3>A$2,M3,0) and replicate it down the whole sheet. Below the last entry (e.g. A499), in say A500, enter the expression sum(A3A499)*2/(A1+A2). The expression in A500 will evaluate to the number of rows in which a value between 499 and 501 occurs between M3 and M499. If you <Tab> across the sheet and <Page Down> with column A fixed you will quickly pick up the rows you want. Of course, a selective Save (using the ‘Save selection of rows’ dialogue boxes) to a new file will collect together the rows you want and no other rows. 4.9 The growing file 4.9 Howard Snow loaded an 80K file having over 10,000 rows from a PipeLine disc, sorted it on one of the columns and then tried to resave it. The PipeLine discs are pretty well full and he got the error message ‘Disc full’. He saved to another disc and found that the file had grown by about 10K! He sent me the larger file. I loaded it, saved it, and it shrank back to 80K! After many red herrings, it took Robert Macmillan to come up with the solution. It was nothing to do with V 3.10 against V 3.14 (still the latest version) and nothing to do with sorting but it was the now well known ini problem (first recorded by Stephen Gaynor) in another guise. Howard’s ini file contains the default Line separator (see the Files − Save − Line separator dialogue box) CR,LF (or LF,CR) whereas mine contains LF on its own. Whenever Howard came to save the file he had an extra byte (the CR byte) per row that I didn’t. Ten thousand rows produce ten thousand CRs, ten thousand extra bytes! Although I loaded Howard’s file without problem (and he loaded mine) our different ini files made the saving operations different. 4.9 The ini file 4.9 If you send me a file that relies in any way on default option settings then send me a copy of your ini file too. If your file uses your default settings and if they are different from mine then all your defaults will be substituted by my defaults when I load your file. Perhaps the worst thing that happened to me because of this ini feature is that Colton Software sent me a price list on disc to send out with their PipeDream leaflet. Their default ini was for numbers to be to two decimal places; mine is zero. When I loaded their document and printed it, all prices were rounded to the nearest £1.00 (instead of the nearest 1p) and I didn’t notice it! I use a default of zero decimal places; if I send you a price list in which I have forced some slots to two decimal places then, no matter what your default − even if it is ten decimal places − those slots I have changed from my default will be reproduced correctly (two decimal places) when you load the document into your machine. 4.9 File conversions 4.9 The Liberator (see last month’s PipeLine column) was a now obsolete computer. David J Holden used to have one. He has written many file conversion routines to and from the Liberator format. One way of converting files from, say, MasterFile format to PipeDream format is to convert to and from some ‘standard’ intermediate format. David used the Liberator format as the ‘standard’ intermediate format. The good news is that David now has a copy of PipeDream 3 and will be rewriting his routines. He will probably use PipeDream as the ‘standard’ intermediate format. 4.9 Even better news is that Ian M H Williamson, a PipeLine subscriber, has volunteered to be a PipeLine Helper for all PipeLine subscribers who want to convert files of ‘alien’ format to PipeDream format. Send your files on a disc to me in the first instance and I will pass them on to Ian. 4.9 Illegal number of output bits 4.9 I can now make the definitive statement that this ‘bug’, which causes printing to be cancelled, is not a PipeDream bug. Of course I am quoting Colton Software but the experts over there have managed to get Acorn’s !Draw to do the same thing under similar circumstances and have put the problem back to Acorn. Watch this space! 4.9 Patricia Vasey has written to me with a technique which helps her to avoid changing back to the default colours. It is simply to set the mode to a 256 colour mode (e.g. mode 15) from the palette icon. News such as this is still very much in demand both to help PipeDream users and to help diagnose the problem. 4.9 Here is the latest suggestion! If you have set your FontMax values such that you are using anti-aliased outlines on screen (with non standard background colours) then this is what is held in the Font cache. ColourTrans works hard for you on the screen presentation if you are using non standard colours. If you now send your document to a RISC-OS printer driver it seems to get confused about the anti-aliased outlines interpreted by ColourTrans and produces the error message. Well, if you don’t understand what I’m talking about, don’t worry, try Patricia’s solution instead. What that (probably) does is to purge a lot of rubbish out of the Font cache so that the Font Manager stands a chance of sending correct information to the Printer driver. 4.9 Changing the colours in PipeDream to the default colours before printing doesn’t always prevent the ‘bug’ striking particularly if you have a second application (e.g. !Draw or !Paint) with documents that contain text and a non standard palette. Here is some more advice; before printing from PipeDream clear any marked block with <Ctrl-Q>; if you can, purge the font cache (e.g. change the mode). It is always good practice to Save before printing; if you have extensive trouble with a file then save it, close the file, Tidy Up (or Quit) PipeDream, reload the file and then print it. 4.9 Printing sprites 4.9 There seems to be some confusion over a remark I made in March. On the July 1990 PipeLine disc there are ‘workarounds’ by Maurice Edmundson for printing sprites from within PipeDream in ‘non square pixel’ modes. The then current version of PipeDream would print sprites correctly only from within ‘square pixel’ modes. The latest version of PipeDream, V 3.14 will print sprites correctly from all modes. Because of this, the ‘workarounds’ on the July 1990 PipeLine disc are redundant. Indeed, if you use Maurice’s ‘workarounds’ then V 3.14 will not print out the sprites correctly. 4.9 Hence, when I publish the ‘revised edition’ (in July 1991) of the July 1990 PipeLine disc I shall not be including the redundant ‘workarounds’. Some people have said to me that they don’t want to upgrade to V 3.14 because Maurice’s ‘workarounds’ won’t work any more with V 3.14. Don’t worry about the ‘workarounds’ − upgrade now because V 3.14 is ‘better’ than earlier versions and you don’t need the ‘workarounds’. Gosh! Let’s hope I’ve made it clear this time. 4.9 Upgrading PipeDream 4.9 This is a service for PipeLine subscribers only. I now have Colton Software’s Upgrade Kit and permission to upgrade PipeLine subscriber’s master discs to V 3.14. Send your master disc to me together with a label and a 22p stamp. I will upgrade your master and get it back to you by return post. A ‘PipeLine subscriber’ is one with a currently valid annual subscription. 4.9 Booting 4.9 I have had some correspondence with Elwyn Morris about difficulties he has had with booting up from switch on (PipeLine column August 1990). Some of the function keys were being executed after booting. This is cleared by adding a *FX 15 at the beginning of the Obey sequence. He was getting an unwanted Untitled1 file on screen at the end of the sequence. This doesn’t happen if you include \FQ|m as the last line of the Obey file called by !Boot. 4.9 DiscCat & ArcScan 4.9 Francis Aries has improved his DiscCat (disc cataloguing) program which first appeared about a year ago. He has used it to produce a catalogue of the PipeLine discs. One consequence of the improved program is that, to get the best out of it, Authors need to enter keywords on a specific line. I hope to issue the revised July 1990 disc with keywords in place for Francis’ program. Please will authors of PipeLine articles write to me for details. 4.9 Let me know whether you want a catalogue of PipeLine in ArcScan format. I have had an offer from Joe Herzberg to look after the ArcScan format if there is enough demand so please let me know. 4.9 Has anybody got an index of the Archive PipeLine articles in PipeDream format including a column of keywords which can be searched? 4.9 Tax tables, bibliography and timetables 4.9 L H Snow has sent me a PipeDream tax table spreadsheet. Daniel Dorling’s Bibliography and school/college timetables by Peter Wicks are both available on disc. 4.9 Mortgage calculations 4.9 Keith Matthews has sent me an excellent Shareware application which uses PipeDream to make mortgage calculations. Do you want a copy? Being Shareware you contribute to Keith whatever you think it is worth when you have tried it out. 4.9 Charles Dickens 4.9 This database is of characters appearing in the works of Charles Dickens. An excellent 65K file with references to over 1000 characters − this file is indispensable for crossword puzzle or Dickens addicts − by Roger M King of Guernsey. 4.9 Redefined keyboard 4.9 One for schools as well as serious users. Ed Rispin of the Institute of Terrestrial Ecology has sent me a keyboard definition macro which converts the keyboard to a set of tally counters. Ed says that when he has collected a sample of invertebrates then he has to count the different types. By allocating a different key to each type (e.g. Q for snails, W for slugs, E for earthworms, etc) then the count consists of tapping a single key for each specimen. Ed’s disc contains the macro, a !Draw file for the keyboard layout and a blank for you to customise. Ed uses this for real! 4.9 Macros 4.9 A growth area for PipeDream users. Send me yours. Recent contributions include “Smart Quotes” and one to load and lock user dictionaries. 4.9 I am in contact with Colton about the best way of including macros on disc so that you can record a macro and then copy the macro to another disc (changing the directory path) and still have the macro ‘work’. The problem is that different people might have different directory or disc names for the directory containing the macros. I have a partial solution which involves the recipient of the disc of macro files clicking on an obey file to set a system variable which takes the value of the path name to the macros. Has anyone any other suggestions? What we need is a macro which sets the path to the macro directory! 4.9 The PUI 4.9 Up to now only two readers have written to Colton Software asking for more information about the PUI. Perhaps it is not going to be as useful as I and Colton Software thought! 4.9 Finally 4.9 At last I have managed to return every disc sent to me. Last month in desperation, I operated a last in first out (LIFO) system on top of a hierarchy of priorities. This meant that some of you who sent me discs had to wait quite a long time for a reply. Generally I have given the !Help correspondence a higher priority than PipeLine contributions. I think that the longest delay was about six weeks. Sorry! However, more of you benefitted from this policy than lost out and those with a problem usually received a reply by return post. Also the April 1991 PipeLine discs were posted early (during the last week of March). I am flattered by the spate of renewals − more than half of those who took the April 1991 disc have already renewed. 4.9 Please keep your letters and discs coming. I will do my best to keep you up to date with applications, to help you with your problems and I’ll return your discs to you as soon as practicable. A 4.9 4.9 Language Column 4.9 David Wild 4.9 There has been very little new on the language front during the last couple of months − and it doesn’t seem as though there is a great deal in the pipeline at the moment. I suppose that the next peak will be when object-oriented versions start to appear for the Archimedes as they are doing for the PC. 4.9 What does give some cause for concern, right across the computer range, is the standard of programs that get released. In some cases, notably dBase IV, the software house has been struggling to survive the damage to their reputation. 4.9 Recently, I found that I had been using my home accounts package for over a year and when I looked at the graphs I found that they didn’t actually mean anything. During the first complete year they had reflected the state of my bank account quite faithfully, but the program couldn’t cope with the change to more than one year’s details. 4.9 An outlining package, supplied on one of the Careware disks from Archive, turns out to have a number of bugs in it. The instructions say that you are allowed eight levels of idea and you can “demote” an idea from one level to another. If you forget how far you have gone, the program can crash with an out-of-range subscript error. Another problem is that you can load an existing file into the program but it will still show up as a new file in the heading and using the save facility, which has a very useful default directory feature, will save it as a new file rather than the one that was brought in. There are one or two other minor faults which add to the spoiling of what should have been a very useful program. 4.9 The problem isn’t, of course, confined to the Archimedes − or even to the micro-computer world. At work, we use a couple of mini computers with programs supplied by a software house to meet our requirements and we have to do some very fierce testing before we can let the programs into our “live” system. 4.9 The common feature is that the errors were not found at the testing stage; this ought to have eliminated all but the most subtle. It is true that testing can never prove that there are no bugs but a good testing plan can keep them to a minimum. 4.9 Ideally, this testing plan should be drawn up before any of the programming work is started. It is, in effect, an important part of the program specification. If you are writing a payroll program, for instance, somebody should know exactly what outputs should be generated by any input, and if this isn’t the case, you don’t know enough to do the program design. The actual format, in terms of appearance, might well be left till later but the employees who are to be paid by the system will know how much they ought to get and will expect the program to do it correctly. 4.9 Equally, the Income Tax and National Insurance people will know what information, as well as money, they ought to get − and this will form another part of the specification. 4.9 In most other applications, there will be similar knowledge about what is expected from any input, and there should be clear information about what should happen to any unacceptable input. With this information, you should be able to generate test data which will allow you to check that all input is treated correctly. 4.9 Creating all this test data and documentation is a big and unexciting task but, if it is done properly, it can pay enormous dividends in keeping out many of the bugs which seem to infest many programs. 4.9 The test data doesn’t all have to be realistic − invoices, for example, can be for silly small amounts − but each item of input should be identifiable throughout the run. One of my colleagues doing acceptance testing of a new program fell into a trap by creating several lines of data with identical amounts in each line. There was a bug in the program that only read the amounts from the first line and repeated them on all the subsequent lines for the transaction so he didn’t spot the bug. 4.9 Languages such as the current versions of ‘C’ and Pascal, which allow you to compile separate modules to do common tasks, help to eliminate many of the bugs but you still need to test to prove that the expected results are produced. 4.9 The type of bug that I am talking about here must not be confused with design flaws. There are programs which don’t do quite what I want but they do do what was specified − so there isn’t a bug. A good example of this was a small database program given away with a recent issue of Archimedes World. The standard of programming, in terms of technique, is absolutely first class but the program still needs quite a bit of improvement. One interesting thing about it is that the programmer shows that reasonably complex programs can be written in BASIC without any need to use GOTO! 4.9 Turbo Pascal 4.9 I recently bought a copy of Turbo Pascal to run on the PC emulator. The object-oriented facilities are extremely interesting and I hope that someone, somewhere, is considering similar facilities for the Archi medes. The combined editor and compiler is useful; it has facilities for compiling in memory and any errors are reported back with the relevant source code. 4.9 Turbo Pascal “units” are very similar to the modules in Acorn Pascal and there are some very useful compiler options so that only changed modules are recompiled. 4.9 Another facility similar to that on Acorn Pascal is a construct known as a “typed constant” which is much the same as an initialised static variable. The pedant in me rather dislikes the name as I feel that a constant should be exactly that − with no risk of it changing during the run. 4.9 Another pedantic objection is that there seems to be no way of telling the system that you want non ISO-standard features flagged. The philosophy seems to be that because Turbo Pascal is so popular there is no need to worry about other people’s standards. I do feel that this is rather short-sighted as many routines will be non-compatible. 4.9 As I explore the program, I will record my reactions and let you know how I get on in later issues. A 4.9 4.9 Credit where it is due 4.9 • Thanks a lot! − In Archive, 4.7, p 60, I asked for information about a module which makes the resolution of the mouse pointer dynamic. 4.9 The response has been quite staggering: I received no less than 23 letters from three countries telling me about the !MegaMouse module and as if this were not enough, 5 people actually sent a floppy containing the !MegaMouse. 4.9 Archimedes lovers really are great people! 4.9 Jochen Konietzko, Koeln, Germany A 4.9 4.9 Small Ads 4.9 • A3000 + Acorn colour monitor + stand. VGC £500 ono. Phone 0908−377239. 4.9 • A3000 + colour monitor £600. Chromalock 235 £145, Atelier £50, Render Bender £30, Splice & Tween £20, World View £5. All v.g.c. boxed. £800 the lot. Phone Mark on 081−670−8055. 4.9 • A310 + CM8833 monitor dual drives, 2 slot bp, Trackerball, Star LC10, 140 discs inc storage, many books. All vgc. £650. Failing eye sight forces sale. Can deliver up to 75 miles from E Northants. Phone 0933−57811. 4.9 • A310/1 upgraded to 4M + 20M Hdisc £850, Oak 45M internal drive + podule £250, Armadillo A448M MIDI/stereo sampler £120, Acorn MIDI podule (latest software) £40, Laser Direct Qume £800, Impression II £100, Tracker £25, Armadeus £30, Splice £15, Investigator 2 £15. Cost of living forces return to Atari (yuk!). Phone Glenn on 0932−567614. 4.9 • A310/1 upgraded to 4M, MEMC1a, IFEL 4slot bp, 2nd internal drive, VIDC enhancer. Ex. cond. £1050 o.v.n.o. Phone Len on 0225−428662 after 1 p.m. any day of the week. 4.9 • A410, 2M RAM, 40M hard disc, Taxan 775 multisync monitor, First Word Plus 2, all ex cond. £1000 o.n.o. Also Brother HR15 printer. Contact Mr Lefebure on 0869−50482 evenings. 4.9 • A410/1 colour 43M hdisk, 4M RAM, 5¼“ I/F & ext drive, PC emulator, Acorn ISO C, ISO Pascal, PipeDream, FWPlus, PRM, Citizen 120D printer + lots of other software, books, mags discs etc £1800 o.n.o. House purchase forces reluctant sale. Phone 0380−720069 evenings & W/E. 4.9 • A410/1 upgraded to 4M / 50M HD, Taxan 770+, dust-covers, manuals etc as new. £1800 o.n.o. Software available. Phone 0582−607690. 4.9 • A540 as new, boxed, software, cables etc. Offers over £3000. Phone Len on 0225−428662 after 1 p.m. any day of the week. 4.9 • Archimedes podules: Acorn I/O, Armadillo A448 sound sampler & FFT, Brainsoft Multiboard. Also, Acorn C & Fortran 77. All under half price. (Also various BBC/Master stuff.) Phone Ronald Alpiar on 0202−575234. 4.9 • CM8833 monitor and lead £160 o.n.o. Phone 0942−884222. 4.9 • Font Starter Pack £20, Midnight Graphics Clip Art 1 £15, ALPS £10, World Class Leaderboard £10, Pacmania £5. Contact Michael Pargeter on 0462−434061 (evenings). 4.9 • Original software boxed with manuals Poster £50, FWPlus1 £30, EFF fonts (Albert, Clauch, Poster, Sophie, Sulikow, Swiss, Tamsin, Interact) £40. Phone Mike on 0742−342870. 4.9 • R140 + Viking II monitor + lots of PD software. Any reasonable price. Also Pipedream £120, Teletext adaptor (software versions 1.05 & 2.01) £70. Phone Andreas Fuchsberger on 0753−685048 or E-Mail andreasf@uk.ac.rhbnc.cs or andreasf@rhbnc.UUCP. 4.9 • SCSI 20 Mbyte hard disc, Miniscribe, formatted, tested. £90 o.n.o. Phone 081−643−1186. 4.9 • Silver Reed EX43/IF40 daisywheel printer, 4 fonts, 5 cassettes, serial & parallel interfaces £150 o.n.o. Ring Bournemouth 529787. 4.9 • Sony 3½“ drive & dual slot front panel £75, Viewstore (Archimedes) £15, WWisePlus (Arch.) £15, ANSI C v1.14 £10, 27128 EPROMs (PGM 12.5V) £2.75 each. All prices o.n.o. Phone 0234−856070. 4.9 • View for Archimedes £7.50, BBC BASIC Guide (vgc) £7.50. Phone Julyan Bristow on 021−427−5084. 4.9 • Watford A310 2M upgrade £150. Phone William Lack on 0743−790343. 4.9 • Z88 + PC link II, 128k RAM, parallel interface, Archimedes lead, magazines £235. Phone Jason on 0533−704315. 4.9 • Z88 with mains adaptor, Archimedes link, parallel printer cable, manuals etc £170. Phone Mike on 0742−342870. 4.9 Charity Sales − The following items are available for sale in aid of charity. PLEASE do not just send money − ring us on 0603−766592 to check if the items are still available. Thank you. 4.9 (If you have unwanted software or hardware for Archimedes computers, please send it in to the Archive office. If you have larger items where post would be expensive, just send us details of the item(s) and how the purchaser can get hold of them.) 4.9 User Guides £2 + £3 postage, Genesis 1 £20, Superior Golf £8, The Real McCoy (UIM, White Magic, Arcade Soccer & Quazer) £15, ArcWriter £4, Serial Interface/buffer for Epson FX80 £15. A 4.9 4.9 Schema − Good News & Bad News 4.9 David Scott 4.9 My recent acquisition of Schema (version 1.03) as a replacement for Logistix and its disappointing performance, has prompted me to set up a comparison between the three main contenders for the title of ‘Definitive Archimedes Spreadsheet’. A list of the main good and bad points of Schema is also included. 4.9 Spreadsheet construction 4.9 A medium sized test sheet was created using each package in turn. It consists of 100 rows by 30 columns (3000 cells). Cell A1 was initially left blank. The rest of the first rows and columns were set up with expressions of the form ‘A1+1’ so that each cell depends on the value entered in A1. The block from B2 to the bottom right corner of the sheet (AD100) was set up to give the product of the current row and column using a formula of the form: ‘@A2*B@1’. (The @ sign indicates that the following value is fixed; the actual method for doing this varies on each package.) 4.9 Performance comparison 4.9 The performance was measured on an Archimedes 410/1 updated to 4 Mbytes of ram and using a 42 Mbyte hard disc for loading and saving. The system font was used for all tests which were displayed on a multisync monitor in mode 20. The results of the tests are as follows: 4.9 Logistix Pipedream Schema 4.9 Load time 4 s 20 s 70 s 4.9 Save time 4 s 9 s 10 s 4.9 Recalculation time 4 s 13 s 90 s 4.9 File size 130 K 44 K 90 K 4.9 Memory size c.700 K 800 K 832 K 4.9 Summary of results 4.9 Logistix is by far the fastest program. Its main disadvantages are that it is not a RISC-OS task and that the data files on disc are larger. 4.9 Pipedream makes most efficient use of disc space but is from 2 to 5 times slower than Logistix. It is a RISC-OS task but does not include graphs and charts. 4.9 Schema is slow for both load and recalculation although files are midway in size. Although many of the features are good, the performance generally is too slow when used with spreadsheets of a substantial size. 4.9 (I would say that judging spreadsheets on the basis of one example sheet could be a little misleading because different types of sheet will show off the strengths and weaknesses of the different spreadsheets. Ed.) 4.9 Features of Schema 4.9 How does the newcomer, Schema, rate in terms of performance? 4.9 Good features are: 4.9 • Full RISC-OS implementation 4.9 • Graphs and charts are available and may be transferred to other tasks in Draw format 4.9 • Comprehensive macro language allows complex task to be programmed 4.9 Poor features (see below for more details) are: 4.9 • Very slow with medium and large spreadsheets 4.9 • Memory control is poor resulting in large and increasing requirements 4.9 • Bugs can cause system failure and data loss 4.9 • Difficult to set up column and row widths quickly 4.9 • No headings facility for either columns or rows 4.9 • Bad choice of default style − not a commonly used format 4.9 • Macros can only be called by a slow menu-based method 4.9 • Printouts can have both missing and extra columns/rows 4.9 • Problems when loading data in CSV format 4.9 • No support for converting from Logistix (support is provided for Lotus 123) 4.9 • No standard database type functions as provided in most spreadsheets 4.9 Documentation is a 432 page manual which is comprehensive and generally has good content but is spoiled by some minor errors. 4.9 As mentioned in the March 1991 issue of Archive, a new release is likely later this year which will address some of the problem areas listed above. In the meantime, it is really only suitable for small spread sheets where it compares well with the competition. 4.9 Now the bad news 4.9 Now for some detailed comments on some of the problems found with Schema Version 1.03. These are based on using it on an Archimedes 410/1 upgraded to 4 Mbyte of memory and a 42 Mbyte internal hard disc. The Schema application and all data files were installed in a dedicated directory on the hard disc. Schema was configured not to use overlays or reset slots. 4.9 Speed 4.9 The time taken to load and recalculate medium to large spreadsheets is slow. The larger the sheet, the worse this problem becomes. This effectively precludes the use of spreadsheets with more than about 5000 active cells since the load or recalculation times can become many minutes. The load speed is likely to be noticeably improved in future releases. 4.9 Window redraw 4.9 The time taken to redraw a spreadsheet window of fixed size seems to be proportional to the size of the spreadsheet. Large spreadsheets take longer to redraw even though the visible data area is just the same as for a small spreadsheet. This is because the results of visible cells can be dependent on other non-visible cells. 4.9 Work space 4.9 The amount of work space required seems to be out of all proportion to the size of the spreadsheet data file. One large sheet with about 10,000 cells required 2.4 Mbytes of memory during building of the sheet. 4.9 When workspace has been taken from the system, it can only be returned if Schema is quitted. Discarding all of the spreadsheets has no effect whatsoever on the current memory allocation. If a spreadsheet is saved, discarded and then reloaded, the memory requirement often increases further. If Schema is restarted, however, the memory requirement is usually much less than that previously required when constructing the sheet. 4.9 These work space problems will be improved in the next release. 4.9 Faults 4.9 When data is loaded from a CSV file, the spreadsheet must be created with sufficient rows and columns to accommodate all the data being loaded. If this is not done, all data which overflows the edges is lost without any warning. 4.9 If the default style is set to anything other than Plain before loading a CSV file then this is ignored and the default style is treated as Plain. 4.9 Setting column and row sizes 4.9 The Column Width and Row Height are tedious to set up from the menu as they are at the end of a long menu chain. One of these stages could be avoided by setting the default units required from, for example, the Spreadsheet Default menu. The values which are preset for the three different units are not equivalent (96 point is not 1 inch, the correct value is 72 point). 4.9 If one of the values is changed the values in the other units do not move in synchronism. The value in the dialogue box is always the default or last value set. It would be more helpful is this was the current value of the selected row or column as this would enable a new value to be guessed much more easily. 4.9 Note that the units required for the equivalent CHANGEHEIGHT and CHANGEWIDTH macros are pixels. 4.9 Using the mouse to change the width/height is not always predictable. Sometimes it seems to be impossible to make any change in size because, even though the correct mouse pointer appears, only a window redraw occurs. The amount of change in size is not always the amount indicated by the mouse pointer. 4.9 Dialogue box termination 4.9 When dialogue boxes are used, the program is not consistent as to the use of keys rather than mouse clicks to end the dialogue. ‘Return‘ should always equate to ’OK‘ or ’Yes’, and ‘Escape’ should equate to ‘Cancel’ or ‘No’. In some cases, pressing <escape> allows the operation to go ahead instead of aborting it, for instance, with the block fill confirmation dialogue box. In this case pressing <return> has no effect. 4.9 Keyboard macros 4.9 Keyboard macros are rather tedious to use as they have to be attached to a submenu which is relatively slow to use. 4.9 Non-rectangular spreadsheets 4.9 If, as is quite common, it is not practical for a spreadsheet to be rectangular, all the cells required to make the spreadsheet rectangular are included by Schema if any formatting is applied to them. This can make the spreadsheet both larger in memory requirements and in the time taken to recalculate it. It is therefore worthwhile to avoid even setting a style to unused cells. 4.9 YESORNO Macro 4.9 If <escape> is pressed, the result is not predictable and may lead to system failure. It does not return <2> as stated in the manual, nor can the pointer be moved outside the dialogue box. 4.9 Plain style 4.9 It is not possible to alter this style permanently, as the default style reappears even after alteration and saving as the new default style. The default parameters chosen are not particularly useful as one decimal place is one of the less common requirements. The commonest requirements in my experience are for either integer format or for two decimal places (currency). 4.9 Headings 4.9 There is no headings facility which fixes one or more rows and/or columns on the screen. It can only be simulated by opening another window for the headings. This is both wasteful of screen space as well as tedious to set up. 4.9 Documentation Problems 4.9 Page 55, 156: the use of the symbols, ^ (raise to power symbol) and shift key symbol are confused. 4.9 Page 79: the three examples of rounding are all incorrect. 4.9 Page 83: the selected column width or row height is in inches, centime tres or points (NOT characters). 4.9 Page 228: the two local variables called ‘a’ and ‘butter’ are not declared in the example. 4.9 Page 233: Repeat evaluates the given sequence until the expression evaluates to a zero value (NOT non-zero). 4.9 Page 240: Line 2 refers to a list below. There is no obvious list. 4.9 Page 241: There is a reference to attaching a macro to F9 and F10. Both these keys are already used for other functions as is Shift F10. 4.9 Page 273: The ‘Related macros’ refers to CELL. This is a function not a macro. 4.9 Page 276: CONTMACRO refers to Shift F9 and F10. Shift F10 is already used. How is this specified, is it 0 = F9 and 1 = F10? 4.9 Print problems 4.9 If the grid lines are printed then their thickness is variable. The alignment of the characters relative to the grid lines is poor when the row height is reduced. 4.9 It is not clear that the ‘Header’ and ‘Margin’ figures represent fixed rows and columns rather than the row and column labels. When printed on the LaserDirect Qume, the contents of the Header and Margin rows and columns are not printed; only blank cells. 4.9 One more column at the right hand side of the sheet is printed than existed on the spreadsheet. 4.9 (Colin Ross Malone Ltd, who are doing the programming of Schema for Clares, have acknowledged most of these problems and are seeking to solve them and implement various enhancements in a later version(s) of Schema.) A 4.9 4.9 4.9 Stars on your Screens 4.9 Ronald Alpiar 4.9 (Some time ago, we asked readers to tell us what sorts of things they did with their Archimedes computers. Ronald has written to tell us about how he uses his Archimedes (alongside a PC − Hiss, boo!) to do some fascinating computer assisted astronomy. We have given him some space − perhaps more than usual, but it is very interesting − to explain. He has sent some photos to show us but not all of them, I am afraid, are easily reproducable in mono, but we will have a go with some of them. Ed.) 4.9 The computerisation of astronomy, ‘re-rigeur’ for the professional astronomers, is now all the rage amongst amateurs. So I ought really to begin with a Pauline Health Warning and caution you that, once hooked by this metamorphosis of an ancient hobby, you may well become a lifetime addict! 4.9 Here’s how it all works. At the focus (both literally and metaphori cally) of the entire setup is the Charge Coupled Device Sensor − the CCD chip. This is an IC somewhat similar, electronically, to an EPROM, in which the UV filter is replaced by a transparent glass window. The light sensitive area consists of an array of pixels in each of which incoming light photons can be converted into ‘free’ electrons. They are not quite free, because each pixel forms a potential well which confines the accumulating photo-electrons. At a given signal, the potential well walls are lowered, thus shepherding packages of pixel electrons in an orderly manner to a readout position where each such package creates a charge for amplification, receives further processing and finally is turned into a video display. In normal circumstances this ‘expose- readout’ cycle takes place at video frame rate − 50 frames/second. 4.9 Now, what can you see if you point a normal video camera at a starry sky? The answer, however light sensitive your camera may be, is precious little − far less, in fact, than you’d see with a cheap pair of binoculars. At best, a few of the brightest stars visible to the naked eye − big deal! 4.9 So what’s the point? The point lies in that tiny time slice − 1/50 second − during which photo-electrons are allowed to accumulate in the CCD’s pixels − that is under normal video operating conditions. The intelligent reader will now be way ahead of me. Why not permit the pixels plenty of time to amass lots of lovely electrons and only then flush the accumulated contents to the readout position? This ‘integrated exposure’ is precisely the trick which astronomers use to capture the images of faint stars − whereby not 1/50 sec, but seconds, minutes or even hours of integration time are employed. The method works splendidly − but there are three snags. 4.9 House Full! 4.9 The first snag is that the potential well walls which confine electrons within pixels are necessarily finite. In practice, about 150,000 electrons would fill up a well; adding more would cause an overflow to neighbouring pixels. So, if in order to capture faint stars, you increase integration time, any bright stars in the field will be over- exposed. Any further photo electrons created will slide over the top of the potential walls into neighbouring pixels. Ultimately the entire pixel array can become flooded by the overflow from brighter stars. However, long before that catastrophic point, both detail and dynamic range begin to suffer. 4.9 Keep it cool! 4.9 The second snag is that, even in the total absence of incoming light, we have to contend with free electrons in the CCD substrate. Being confined in potential wells, these ‘thermal electrons’ build up − just like photo-electrons. The term ‘thermal’ is well chosen, since this phenom enon is highly temperature dependent. At normal room temperature, and even in the total absence of any incident light whatsoever, thermal electrons can fill up potential wells in as little as 10 seconds. How then do the professionals achieve integration times of minutes or hours? 4.9 The answer it to cool it! By reducing the CCD’s temperature, and hence that of its substrate, you dramatically reduce the number of thermal electrons − thus opening the door to long integration times. Nowadays cooling is delightfully simple, thanks to a tiny device known as a Thermo Electric Cooler − TEC. It consists of a parallel array of diodes which utilise the Peltier Effect to act as a heat pump. Heatsink one end of the pump, and the other end rapidly cools down. In practice, a TEC is a tiny sliver − size of a 5p piece − which is thermally sandwiched between the under surface of the CCD chip and a substantial heatsink. It is typically powered by a 5 volt ¼ amp DC supply and quickly lowers the substrate temperature at least 30 C below ambient. At that stage, we stop worrying about thermal electrons and start worrying about our optics getting covered with condensation! 4.9 Grab it! 4.9 Now, video signals normally consist of a train of successive frames flying past at 50 frames/second − the eye and photo-persistence providing the illusion of continuity. Our third snag is that following integration time we receive one frame and one frame only of integrated information. High alertness is needed to grab it before it is gone for ever. One way to do this is to record it on video and subsequently view the single integrated frame in freeze-frame mode. However, this solution is far from satisfactory for critical astronomy. Rather, the frame is digitised, pixel-by-pixel, the results being stored in RAM. We thus end up with an area of RAM which mirrors the contents, after integration, of the array of CCD pixels. Timing is of the essence; grabbing the next frame must follow immediately after sending the ‘stop integrating’ signal to the CCD driver: and that can only be done when the same device controls both integration and the digitiser board. 4.9 Image processing 4.9 This is where the computer takes over. After generating a timed exposure and grabbing the integrated frame, displaying the result on VDU could simply consist of transferring the appropriate contents of RAM to screen. 4.9 However, we can do far, far more than that. Image Processing (IP) enables us to manipulate, clean-up, enhance, even beautify the raw image − beyond photography’s wildest dreams. At its simplest level, IP is used to scale and/or rotate the display − maybe for easier comparison with star charts. The two commonest IP functions are ‘thresholding’ (removing noise by setting a lower intensity limit to what’s displayed) and ‘stretching’ (selecting part of the observed dynamic range and scaling it to cover the entire dynamic range available on display). These two simple, but powerful, techniques reveal faint details which are practically invisible in the original image field. ‘Convolution kernels’ can be applied to detect edges and thus sharpen up fuzzy images. At a more advanced level, FFTs are used to compute spacial frequencies, thus enabling us to resolve nearby sources − such as binary stars which are so close as to appear as one. Lastly, by in-depth analysis of the image field, a novel method of IP (developed by the author) − called ‘auditing’ − allows us to tabulate the entire stellar contents for display in any way we choose. 4.9 Nor is there any colour-bar, even though we’re using monochrome cameras. Information obtained by conducting timed exposures via coloured filters can be combined to display the subtle tint differences between stars − or indeed to enhance them. 4.9 I don’t have to remind my fellow countrymen how hostile our climate is to astronomy. Sometimes ages pass with barely an half-hour break in the night sky coverage. This makes computerised astronomy particularly attractive: during a single half-hour cloud break, you can capture enough images to keep yourself happily occupied processing, studying and wondering at them for weeks to come. Moreover you need burn no midnight oil! 4.9 Getting it together 4.9 We’ve now considered all five essential ingredients − CCD sensors, integrated exposure, cooling, frame grabbing and image processing. How is this kit of parts all put together? Back to that bedroom − which happens to adjoin a large flat roof − home to the author’s astro equipment including the item of concern to us now, illustrated in the photo. Here we see an array of three cameras saddled on a common ‘equatorial’ mount. Before turning our attention to those cameras, a few words about the mounting. 4.9 As is standard in astronomy, it consists basically of two perpendicular axes, so that one can point the camera array in any direction. However, the whole thing is strangely tilted over. In fact, one of the axes is adjusted to always point directly at the earth’s celestial pole − the Pole Star near enough. This is because, due to the earth’s daily rotation about its own axis, all stars (Sun included) appear to trace out concentric circles, centred on the celestial pole − circling it in approximately 24 hours. When we make timed exposures we would just see faint circular arcs instead of sharp star points. So we have to compensate for the earth’s rotation by counter-turning our cameras about the same axis, and at just the same rate. Astronomers call this ‘tracking’ : if the mount is equatorial this is very simply achieved by inching only one of the mount’s two axes of rotation. In my case the axes are driven, via precision worm gears, by three stepper motors. A BBC Master is dedicated to complete control of the equatorial mount. Its User Port generates TTL signals which, after amplification, drive the stepper motor windings. Software enables one to slew rapidly from ‘home’ direction to any chosen direction in the sky − or to any object whose celestial coordinates are known: calculating the correct number of stepper motor steps, the program compensates for the fact that the star will have moved on or back a little by arrival time. On completion of slew, the mount locks onto the direction by tracking: again the program uses internal timers to generate stepper motor pulses at exactly the correct rate to compensate for the earth’s rotation. 4.9 Cabling trunks connect the roof-top equipment to the bedroom computer control centre. Thereby all slewing, tracking, camera operation, shutter control, focussing, viewing etc can be remotely performed in the luxury of indoor warmth and comfort. 4.9 Cameras and lenses 4.9 There are three independent cameras in the array. Two of them are DIY modified Phillips Imaging Modules. These consist of a CCD sensor together with all the electronics to drive it on five surface technology circuit boards. All it needs is a 12 volt supply, and an ordinary video monitor to display the view. I had to locate and cut the fine circuit board tracks which send four sets of timing pulses to the CCD. They are diverted to an extra board which subjects all four to a common TTL gate control. When control is low, CCD operation proceeds at the normal video rate: when high, the timing pulses are interrupted, allowing photo- electrons to accumulate until it falls low again. Nerves of steel and rock steady hands were needed to cut and solder the microscopic tracks on the surface technology circuit boards! Only one of these two cameras incorporates a TEC cooler. The third camera, which provides all the illustrations for this article, is a commercial Lynxx astro camera from SpectraSource. 4.9 The photo shows all three (if it comes out in print! Ed). The rectangu lar boxes house my modified Phillips Imagers. The lower, and larger box contains the TEC cooled imager, its reddish copper plate heatsink being clearly visible. Nestling and somewhat dwarfed between them, sits the Lynxx camera. 4.9 4.9 4.9 4.9 4.9 Notice that all three employ, as optics, ordinary camera lenses. Although all have also been mounted on powerful astronomical telescopes for deep sky work, the humble photo lens is all that’s required for wide ‘rich field’ working, comet hunting etc. 4.9 Digitisers 4.9 A digitising circuit is essential to convert the analogue pixel charges to digits for computer storage. The digitiser has to be very fast, particularly if its to grab and digitise pixel contents at full video rate. Assuming a 256x256 pixel array, each digitisation must be complete in a mere 0.3 µsec: this can only be achieved using so-called ‘flash’ converters. However, if the readout can be slowed down to a more leisurely pace, we gain time to digitise with greater accuracy. This leads to another important digitiser requirement − resolution: that is, the number of bits that an analogue variable is digitised to. It can easily be shown that high resolution − lots of bits − is quite critical for serious astrophotography: otherwise not only do we sacrifice the vast dynamic range of stellar brightnesses, but fainter stars, close to the noise background, are progressively lost. Professional astronomers use 16-bit (or more) digitisers: but plenty of serious work can be done with 12-bit resolution. Eight bits is just about tolerable for amateur work; whilst with only 6 bits, one’s options become quickly exhausted. 4.9 Here’s what’s available − 4.9 For the Archimedes: Watford’s Video Digitiser (6-bit) Hawk’s V9 Digitiser (8-bit) 4.9 For PCs : Lynxx Camera & Digitiser (12-bit) & very many other 8 bit ones. 4.9 I use the Lynxx digitiser plugged into a PC, and a Watford Podule on the Archimedes (Hawk being too expensive though desirable). Surely a slight modification of the Watford Podule, incorporating one of the increas ingly cheap and common 8-bit flash AD converters would be possible − thereby transforming a clever toy into a valuable piece of scientific equipment: Mike, are you reading this? 4.9 Computers 4.9 Digitisers are designed to plug into specific computers: so the demands of the digitiser dictates the choice of computer. There’s absolutely no way one can treat a Lynxx digitiser as an Archimedes Podule − nor a Watford Podule as a PC expansion board. So to use the Lynxx camera at all, one needs a PC − in my case an Amstrad 2286. Lest I be accused of treachery I plead that the latter is used for only two purposes, both unprovided for by Archimedes, namely as host to (a) the Lynxx expansion board and (b) a CD-ROM reader expansion board. This latter gives me access to the gigantic (19 million star) GSC catalogue on two CD-ROM disks. 4.9 In both cases, files of information are written onto disk, and immediately transferred to Archimedes (thanks for Arxe’s MultiFS software), where all remaining work is carried out. 4.9 IP software 4.9 All imaging processing and display software is written in BASIC, with some embedded assembly language. My highly CPU intensive and recursive Auditing algorithms are also in BASIC and greatly accelerated using the ABC Compiler. ‘C’ afficionadoes may raise their eyebrows − but I offer no apology! After nearly 2 decades of intensive programming in both languages I find BASIC incomparably the better for developing, testing and running. It is fully up to coping with the most elaborate algo rithms, including compilers for other high level languages. The ability to run in either interpreted or compiled modes is a godsend, which decimates development time. I might expatiate for hours on C’s many and grievous shortcomings: here I mention only its messy and confusing insistence on a cacophony of curious brackets and punctuation marks and the quite appalling implementations (with the honourable exception of Borland’s Turbo C) which force the hapless programmer to spend far more time struggling with a user-hostile implementation than actually writing the program! To me C appears to be advocated on grounds which are either doctrinaire (e.g. that it’s ‘structured’) or quite false (e.g. that it’s ‘portable’). (I was going to edit this out to avoid possible offence but... well, it’s a magazine in which people can express their own views, so, why not? Ed.) 4.9 The accompanying figures (all of which are dramatically illustrate the power of IP. They are all based on a single exposure using an Olympus 42mm f1.2 lens and a 30 second integration time. Of all the stars shown (some 120 have been audited) only the brightest would be visible to the naked eye. 4.9 Figure 1 is the raw CCD image. Theoretically, individual stars ought to occupy only 1 pixel. Note that the brighter ones already overflow into neighbouring pixels. Moreover, the brightest, top right, shows the typical tail due to its electrons being dragged over neighbouring pixels, when flushed upwards to the readout position. Software added the coordinate axes and labelling, the sky itself being devoid of such. The stars are plotted on a 16-level grey scale, which scarcely does them justice. 4.9 In Figure 2 we see the mixed benefits of windowing and stretching. Many more stars are seen than in the original, however they’ve all grown into quite ugly blobs, as in a badly focussed picture. 4.9 The pristine point nature of stars is restored in Figure 3 (only on program disc), thanks to the Audit processing. Lastly, in 4, we see the effect of adding colour (definitely only on the program disc!). Information extracted from three extra exposures, using red green and blue filters was added to the original naked exposure. The hue informa tion was mathematically scaled up to exaggerate the slight tint variations amongst the stars. A 4.9 4.9 4.9 4.9 4.9 4.9 4.9 Camera piccy here 4.9 4.9 Figure 1 − The raw CCD image 4.9 4.9 Figure 2 − The effect of windowing and stretching 4.9 4.9 DTP Seeds 4.9 Tony Colombat 4.9 Open any magazine with connections to the Archimedes and somewhere there will be a reference to DTP. It may be a comment on one of the many programs, details on DTP history or terminology, or just hints and tips on how to avoid such errors as “rivers” or “orphans”. I find all this detail interesting but does it improve my DTP? 4.9 Inspiration for DTP 4.9 It is with the aim of providing inspiration for improving DTP presenta tion that Mike Matson’s book has been produced. The 120 pages are packed full of ideas, designs and creativity which the reader is encouraged to adapt for their own purpose. The biggest idea which is passed on in the book is the need to look carefully at what you read − not just at the words but at the way the words are presented and how this may help you in your own productions. 4.9 Contents 4.9 The headings include; Page layouts, Stationery, Graphs, Invitations, Posters and Advertisements, Contents, Headers and Footers, and Titles and Logos. Each section contains a number of examples, some of which are annotated to describe features the reader should observe. To fully appreciate the techniques involved, however, a supplementary disc needs to be available. This should be possible, as incredibly, all the pages of the book were produced using “Edit”, “Draw” and (showing its power in DTP) “Poster” from 4Mation. 4.9 Conclusion 4.9 Is the book worth the money? It certainly is if you want inspiration for producing impressive DTP documents, but don’t expect to learn any technical terms or details. I think the book needs to read in conjunc tion with simple technical reviews such as that supplied in Archive 4.3 p51 or the book supplied by Computer Concepts along with their Impres sion II DTP package. 4.9 “DTP Seeds” by Mike Matson from 4Mation at £8.45 (or £8 from Archive). A 4.9 Shareware Nº 37 4.9 Alan Highet 4.9 All the programs have been tested on a standard A310 and on a 4 Mbyte A410 with ARM3 and SCSI hard drive. Unless otherwise stated, all programs ran on both machines. 4.9 Help 4.9 This is a very clever utility which adds a help option to the filer application menu and is resident in most of the applications on all the discs I have received from N.C.S. recently. 4.9 If you click <menu> over an application and then go to the sub-menu ‘App. <application>’ there is a help option added which, when selected, displays the readme file in the application directory. It works by having a ‘Help’ application inside the main application which in its turn displays the readme file. 4.9 Aidon 4.9 If you click <menu> on the disc icon and select ‘Free’, a rather messy command window appears showing disc space in bytes which most people find confusing. This utility changes that by intercepting the call and displaying the information in a neat little window with the space displayed in K along with a sliding bar displaying graphically the amount of disc space used. 4.9 Basedit 4.9 This is yet another icon bar front end for the BASIC editor but this one really does set out to allow you easy access. You can just <shift-click> on a BASIC program and the editor will be loaded with the program in view. Returning to the desktop by pressing <F1> twice leaves the program but unfortunately doesn’t warn you to save the program. The other problem is it will not work with a SCSI hard disc. I assume because it’s looking for ADFS disc 4. 4.9 This is certainly one of the best front ends I’ve tried and, with a small modification, I would use it regularly. 4.9 Find 4.9 Clicking on this icon displays a find box enabling you to search any disc for a file or directory with the ability to use wildcards and filetype selection. Clicking on ‘Go’ starts the search and, as the files are found, they appear below the main window. When the search is finished you may click on any file displayed and the parent directory will appear. − A very useful addition for anybody with a hard disc. (I find it awfully slow by comparison with the equivalent on the Mac. Is there a faster version or is it a function of the way the Archimedes files are structured? Ed.) 4.9 Myhelp 4.9 This allows you to add your own help commands which can be called up at any time. You simply add the command to an ASCII menu and the help lines to another ASCII file and then place the application on your disc. Clicking on the application displays a window with the relevant command queries and clicking on the required one displays the associated information. 4.9 Pseudoapp 4.9 This application is only really useful for a hard disc owner as it allows multiple applications to be seen but only one copy to be kept on the disc so saving space. After installing it on the icon bar, you drag an application to the bar and release it. A similar application icon will appear and this can then be dragged to a file window and released. The program then creates an application which contains only a !Boot file, a !Sprite file and a !Run file which stores the location of the real application. By double clicking on the icon the real file is then run transparently to the user. 4.9 This has a limited use but works very well and could be used for temporary directories for program development. Although this works just as well on floppy discs, prompting you to insert the appropriate discs, you might as well label the discs properly and install the actual application. 4.9 Setdir 4.9 Once this is installed on the icon bar, any directory dragged to it is selected as the current directory and a filer window is opened display ing the contents of that directory. There is also an overscan utility selected by clicking menu on the icon bar. This gives you an overscan version of most of the popular modes along with a very big screen and a very small screen. 4.9 The setdir side of the application works fine but the overscan did cause me some problems. If you are using overscan and you quit overscan instead of selecting a new mode with the palette icon, the machine will lock up requiring a <ctrl-break>. Although this is not really a bug, I do think you shouldn’t be able to do it. 4.9 StrongEd 4.9 This is a text editor similar to Edit but allowing up to four documents in memory which you can cut and paste between. Although quite useful, it really is only the same as multiple copies of Edit. The program sits on the icon bar and is RISC-OS compatible but does not multi-task. Programs may be loaded by dropping onto the icon bar and saving is either achieved by a normal save function or, if creating a new file or filetype, returns you cleanly to the desktop with a save box ready to drag to a filer window. 4.9 The functions, similar to Edit, work very well and the speed of the search and scroll are truly superb but I just wonder what benefits this program has over Edit or Twin. Maybe time will tell? 4.9 Fontmenu 4.9 This module provides a hierarchal font menu which means that the initial menu shows the font name with sub-menus showing styles such as bold, italic, etc. This is very similar to the menu used in Impression II and is a much tidier idea for anyone using more than a few fonts. The problem is that you need to understand something about programming to use it and if you wish to use it with commercial software you would need to be able to access their code which is not at all easy if the program was not written in BASIC. 4.9 Hdrivelist 4.9 This is an ASCII list of virtually every hard disc drive giving details such as size, access times, track data and other technical details. The list is very comprehensive but I wonder if anybody would actually use it? 4.9 Interface 4.9 This module allows you to add graphical effects to your windows when writing an application. One nice touch was the inclusion of an Impres sion document for the manual as well as an ordinary ASCII file. 4.9 The effects available at the moment include a choice of borders for an icon and the choice of how the icon is displayed when selected. You can also select the type of pointer used depending on its position, similar to Impression. 4.9 My programming knowledge doesn’t allow me to fully utilise this module but what I have seen works well and compliments the already easy to use FormEd which is also included on the disc. 4.9 Sysfont 4.9 This allows you to create a module to change your system font by typing *ALPHABET <alphabet name>. Any BBC font can be used (filetype &FF7) and nine are provided with the program. 4.9 This works perfectly and could very easily be incorporated in your own programs to change text as and when required although the desktop font can just be installed by double-clicking on the appropriate icon. 4.9 Zansi 4.9 Zansi.sys is a replacement for Ansi.sys in MS-DOS and increases the screen response under PC emulation. I have not been able to test the program but the author claims that the Archimedes will run faster than an 8MHz AT. Also included are MORE.com which replaces the DOS ‘type’ command and VIEW.com which allows you to view files just like a text editor. A 4.9 4.9 Creating the Right Impression 4.9 Ivor Humphreys 4.9 As Audio Editor of the monthly classical record magazine GRAMOPHONE, I look after all aspects of the pages which are devoted to hi-fi matters. Until recently, the whole of the magazine has been produced the hard way, using glue and scissors to assemble pages which the printer then follows. An Archimedes user since 1988, it was inevitable that I should look towards its DTP potential, with a view ultimately to producing finished pages for the magazine. With that in mind, I made contact with Computer Concepts in August 1989. 4.9 Progress has been methodical and, I’m glad to say, almost linear. There was much to learn about driving Impression well enough to produce final artwork which would emulate our house style exactly, although the program is wonderfully intuitive to use. I was determined not to compromise in any respect, and things like the symbols we use to denote the CD, LP or cassette media (C L A), the extended range of foreign accents we require and the way in which in-text codes for all these things are used in our ‘raw’ copy (much of which comes across from a PC network running Wordstar) naturally took some fathoming. I must say straight away that we could not have been achieved all this without the frequent and extensive help we have received from CC, who have written a special version of their Wordstar loader module to suit our particular requirements and have also helped iron out several last-minute crises that we have had with PostScript. 4.9 The system has been in regular use for magazine work for about a year and now supplies finished artwork for the whole of our audio section, several other fairly complex editorial pages, some advertisements and quite a lot of other in-house material each month. It also generates about a dozen preliminary pages of our twice-yearly catalogue of classical music releases as well as its monthly supplement. We are about to embark on the most ambitious project of all, so far: the 1992 edition of our 672-page book for newcomers to Compact Disc called The Good CD Guide. 4.9 As an Archive subscriber from the start, I naturally corresponded with Paul Beverley on occasions and indeed NCS have supplied two of our three machines. As Paul has had a fair number of enquiries about producing professional artwork on the Archimedes, I volunteered to jot down a few thoughts to try and smooth the way a little for others wanting to produce professional DTP output. 4.9 PostScript 4.9 To produce finished artwork, you will have to convert your DTP program output to PostScript format on a disc which can then be taken to a professional typesetting bureaux. As only a very few of these have so far installed Archimedes (but for details of some that have, see Impression Hints & Tips, page 11. Ed.), the final format will almost certainly have to be MS-DOS, which is universally accepted. The Acorn PostScript printer driver is used to produce the file, which is then dragged across to an MS-DOS filer window and renamed. At GRAMOPHONE we use a separate directory on the hard disc (called, quite sensibly, ‘PostScript’!) and use the same default name each time to prevent the build-up of redundant material; this is well worth the trouble since PostScript files are often large. 4.9 System requirements 4.9 Much of my early work was done at home on an A310 with no hard disc but with an external Cumana 40/80 track 5¼ inch drive which was used with the PC Emulator and for taking Beeb-originated text from one of my colleagues. An early 420 at the office was a revelation and this, as well as the 310, has now been upgraded to 4 Mbytes of RAM with ARM3, to complement the recent further acquisition of an A540. I think now that a RAM capacity of 4 Mbytes is pretty well mandatory for serious DTP work (8 M isn’t outrageous), as is a hard disc, and I would describe ARM3 as one of those rather expensive options that makes you wonder how you managed previously. 4.9 Two excellent utilities are Minerva’s PC-Access and, for the Beeb files, Emmet Spier’s Public Domain program DFSreader. PCDir (also PD) is a perfectly good alternative to PC-Access except that it doesn’t format discs to MS-DOS, something which is a surprisingly regular necessity with the size of typical PostScript files. (Loading the emulator just to do this is a pain because it doesn’t multi-task.) A couple of other utilities I’ve found particularly useful are Wastebin from LOOKsystems, which has the benefit of saving its ‘rubbish’ to disc (giving you a second chance to rifle through it, unlike the regular filer delete option) and Emmet Spier’s SciCalc, which I use a lot in almost every session (you can even drag results into an Impression document). Both of these are also PD and available from NCS. One final plug is for Jonathan Marten’s latest enhancement to the original !Draw program, DrawPlus, which, like Impression, is extremely intuitive to use. I find it invaluable. Again it’s PD but I would have paid good money for it. 4.9 (DFSReader is on Shareware 31 (or as a separate program from Watford Electronics at £6 + £2 p&p + VAT), PCDir is on Careware 7, Draw1½ (an earlier version than DrawPlus) is on Shareware 34 and DrawPlus is on Careware 13. There are dustbins littered(!) around various Careware and Shareware discs, but the LOOKsystems’ one is on Shareware 36. Ed.) 4.9 Output 4.9 The latest version of Impression II (2.10) has the facility to add crop marks at the printing stage, obviating the need to set up a master page which is larger than the final required page size. One anomaly with the Acorn PostScript driver, however, is its inability to print pages larger than A4, regardless of the page size set in its menu options. All professional work requires either crop marks or, for four-colour work, registration marks outside the document print area. There are two ways around this. The best by far is to purchase CC’s Expression-PS utility, which has a variety of very useful functions designed to enhance the existing Acorn driver. (These include a range of standard pages with or without extra margins for crop marks, control of half-tone screen density, dot shape and screen angle and an extremely ‘friendly’ routine for matching up PostScript font names with their Acorn equivalents.) Alternatively, one can modify the “PrData” file for one of the set pages within the driver application itself. For example, my page width is 230mm and the depth 300mm, which equates to 652pt by 850pt. I use Version 1 of the driver, in which the A4 page is altered, changing the line: 4.9 page_selection: %%BeginFeature: PageSize A4|Ja4|J%%EndFeature 4.9 to read: 4.9 page_selection: %%BeginFeature: PageSize A4|Jstatusdict begin 4.9 652 850 0 1 setpageparams end|J%%EndFeature. 4.9 This modification will also be of help to users with limited RAM space, since to install Expression-PS requires 96k. (If space is really tight, another 96k can be retrieved by Quit-ing the printer driver after installation, since only its module is required once set up.) If your PostScript driver is Version 2, you should edit its text file PrDataSrc in a similar manner and then run the program PrSquasher to generate a compressed version of the data file PrData. Unless you are using ExpressionPS, you must add the relevant Acorn–PostScript font transla tions to the end of the PSprolog file for any additional fonts that you buy. You should also add the PostScript names to the commented (%%) list at the top of the same file. 4.9 The bureau will either use the MS-DOS Copy command on a PC (or compat ible) to send the file to the phototypesetter via the serial port, or via a Macintosh using Apple File Exchange or DOSMounter. They will need to be told that your files are PostScript and it will also help them to know how many pages there are and what sort of size the files are; any graphics in a file greatly increases its size and thus takes longer to transfer at typically 2400 baud. PostScript files can be truly massive: 100K or more for a complex A4 magazine page with quite simple graphics is not uncommon. You need to decide whether you want bromide or film and, if the latter, whether you want positive or negative output (this option can also be set with Expression-PS). Typical current prices for an A4 page are £3·50 for bromide for next day completion (£5·30 same day) and £6·50 (or £9·50) for film. We use bromides at a medium resolution of 1,270 dpi for most of our work and to be frank there is little point in going higher for most purposes. 4.9 One tip to finish with. Generally, I have found it safest to break long documents down into smaller units. With the fairly complex layouts used in a magazine, it can even make sense to print each page separately so that if a fatal PostScript error is thrown up at the bureau, you can at least go back and focus on the guilty page. This may seem fiddly but the cost can quickly mount up with repeat trials and anyway the bureau cannot afford to be tied up with endless experiments. On the other hand, they will be happiest, once you’ve gained confidence, to have the files in slightly larger chunks of between, say, 5–15 pages, depending on the project. A 4.9 4.9 Careware Disc Nº 4 4.9 Tristan Cooper 4.9 Careware Disc No. 4 is another excellent compilation of Public Domain software, providing a combination of applications, demonstrations, utilities, games and other entertainment. There is comprehensive documentation on the disc which will help you get the most benefit from these programs. The memory required by each application is shown after the name, below. 4.9 !Bin (16K) − This is a RISC-OS dustbin to run on the Archimedes desktop. As it provides instant file deletion, rather than storing files away for later removal, it is a good choice for floppy disc users. If you want to delete a directory, however, you must Select All the files in it then drag them to the bin. 4.9 !Projector (488K) − This animation must be run in mode 15 in order to give the correct speed and the right colours. The author, Malcolm Banthorpe, gives us a wide screen projection of three, essentially blue, birds that gently swan around their window. The action is smooth and impressive and shows what can be done using a combination of Euclid and Mogul. Although acting as a background task, a 1 Mbyte machine is not going to have much left for anything else. 4.9 !SeriaLink (200K+) − This utility is for those who wish to transfer files from Archimedes to BBC. The documentation is clear and explicit. Note that a cable will be required to connect the machines via their RS423 ports. 4.9 !Sparkplug − is provided to expand some archived files. 4.9 !Invade (32K) − If you need any distraction from your various desktop tasks, this pretty little space invader will cruise back and forth above the Icon bar. Zap with the mouse at your peril! 4.9 !Pelmanism (24K) − This old, old favourite card game surfaces in desktop form. As you might expect, you have to match pairs of cards together − but it must be a precise match i.e. including colour, which was news to me ! 4.9 !Wander (32K) − The quick-witted will spot the Cleesian name reference here. If you’re bored with the birds flying around or need a change from a certain Deskduck (see Careware 2) then try these cute little goldfish that swim around the backdrop, blowing bubbles. 4.9 Info − provides important instructions for most of the programs on this disc. 4.9 PCDirV09h (128K) − a very well presented and implemented utility for reading IBM PC format floppies. When installed, an extra floppy drive icon appears on the icon bar, labelled A: which may be used just like the Archimedes floppy drive. You will be prompted for IBM PC discs and may then transfer files − via RAMdisc for speed − onto ADFS floppies or your hard disc. Likewise, ADFS files can be copied onto PC discs. PC file extensions will be converted to an appropriate ADFS file type e.g. .TXT becomes FFF, .BAS becomes FFB and vice versa. Furthermore, files can be dragged straight from a PC disc to an application such as !Edit and back again without the need for an intermediate ADFS disc. This utility is very well documented, works perfectly and must be worth several times the cost of this Careware disc on its own. (For a later version of !PCDir, see Careware Nº7. Ed.) 4.9 Tunes.1 − a small selection of numbers from Genesis, Queen and Super tramp, very well arranged by Richard Millican. 4.9 Tunes.2 − a selection of classical and traditional pieces from Tom Measures including some Mozart, Haydn and Rossini. 4.9 Note that the Archimedes will drive external MIDI instruments to give vastly superior sound quality compared to the internal speaker. 4.9 Convert − consists of several programs which will convert files between Interword, PipeDream, View and Wordwise. It does this by converting files to a common ‘liberator’ format, which may then be converted to any of the other four formats. 4.9 FKeystrip − This BASIC program will produce function key strips on any Epson compatible printer. It will print out 5 strips on a normal fanfold sheet. Note that you may need to issue *IGNORE depending on your printer settings otherwise the whole lot will be on one line! 4.9 ScrBlanker − This module will ‘switch off’ your screen display if the computer is left unused for a certain time, thereby discouraging the old problem of ‘burn-in’ of the screen phosphors. The default time is 600 seconds which can be altered with *Blanktime t , where t is a time in seconds. If there is no keyboard or mouse activity after this time, the screen blanks out, returning immediately a key is pressed or the mouse moved. 4.9 Scrnfade − two BASIC programs for Modes 13 & 15 which can be used to fade out a screen image. 4.9 Summary 4.9 Where can you buy this much excellent software at such a low price and support charity at the same time? If you’re not already buying Careware discs, now is the time to start. A 4.9 4.9 Careware Disc Nº 6 4.9 Tristan Cooper 4.9 Careware Disc Nº 6 is an Archive compilation of Public Domain software, including a combination of applications, utilities, games and music. There is sufficient documentation on the disc to get them running; in many cases a Help option is offered in the Menu window. !Sparkplug is provided to expand those that have been archived. The memory required by each application is shown after the name, where appropriate, below. 4.9 Hangman − You’ll need to expand this onto a blank disc, as it is quite massive! An excellent implementation of this old favourite game, including excellent graphics, showing considerable attention to detail. You can add to the existing word lists or even make up your own using !Edit. 4.9 Lineof5 − Run from desktop, this is a very simple game in the same vein as Connect4 but it is remarkably difficult to beat the computer. Addictive and infuriating − you’ll hate it, often! 4.9 Polymos − This is another huge suite of files that must be expanded onto its own disc. This ancient game uses pieces made of 5 squares in different configurations which must be assembled into the grid. Playable on many levels of difficulty to suit all ages, this demanding game should be part of your collection. 4.9 Music − contains twelve classical pieces from Schubert, Chopin, Beethoven and others; plus seven more modern pieces from various composers. Tom Measures has once again produced some very pleasing arrangements. 4.9 1stExtra (32K) − If you have any existing WP files that you want to use with First Word Plus (version 2), this utility will convert them quickly and efficiently. You install it on the icon bar, drag files to it and follow the menu options. It’s very user friendly and converts both to and from First Word Plus format. 4.9 App_Maker − What an excellent idea! Click on the icon, enter a new application name (and size if necessary) and App_Maker will automati cally create your !Boot, !Run, !Sprites and !Help files for you. You can then load these into !Paint, !Edit etc to tailor them to your needs. Very useful indeed and well documented. 4.9 Evaluate (16K) − This is a desktop utility which will evaluate any mathematical expression that you can give it. At first sight, this looks very elementary but take a look at the Help file − this is a sophisti cated utility which performs just about any maths functions you can imagine and you can tailor it by adding your own functions. 4.9 StickyBD (80K) − It’s very easy to find the desktop cluttered with open directories and the files you want hidden somewhere in the morass. Here’s the solution − you can pick any entry out of a directory window, drag it to the backdrop where the icon will ‘stick’, ready for later use. A neat trick − if you collect the various icons down one side of the screen, it’s rather like having an extra icon bar. 4.9 SysUtil (96K) − There is no way I can do justice to this utility in a few lines! It’s own text file telling you all about it is 13K long! In essence, it provides a wide range of desktop utilities including adfs functions; file finder; save function for system data, character set, configuration, sprites; directory manipulation; First Word Plus functions; and much more. 4.9 RFSMod − a desktop utility for use with Computer Concepts ROM podule giving the commands Free, Compact, Map and Podules. 4.9 Summary 4.9 If one is offered something at a very low price, it’s easy to disregard it as being of little worth. If you are in any doubt as to the value of Archive’s Careware discs then I strongly recommend you to invest in at least one. Take the time to give it a worthy test − and then send off for the rest of them. 4.9 At £7.00 a disc (£6.00 to Archive subscribers), these discs are seriously anti-inflationary. A 4.9 4.9 Silent computing − Is it possible? 4.9 Tord Eriksson 4.9 Silence is golden, especially when working in a small crowded room where everyone is using a computer, each with a fan, or external, fan-cooled drives that send you up the wall with their buzzing. Add to that a couple of laserprinters and dot-matrix printers.... 4.9 Kill the fan! 4.9 The first problem for me was my noisy SCSI drive. This had worked flawlessly since it arrived by post, except for the din from the fan. After I realised that the fan tried to force air into a box that didn’t have any exit holes for the air I drilled some holes in the lid and disconnected the fan. Now there was some air circulation through the box, anyway. 4.9 To improve matters even further I stood the drive on its end, but a friend, who knows computers better than most, told me to stop that immediately as the disc’s bearings and other moving parts are made for sideways or flat mounting − anything else might be harmful. Having become a bit worried about excess heat that might harm the drive I reconnected the fan until I found the ultimate solution: 4.9 There are small thermostatic switches commonly found in fire alarm systems etc. These are either closing or breaking circuits. The switching temperature is typically 50 or 70° C in a fire alarm system (they are made in a wide range, with a switching range of around 10 degrees − to stop them from switching on and off all the time and wearing out prematurely). 4.9 A switch that closed at 70°C was, in my mind, perfect to put in series with the fan circuit. Lowering the drive to the lower mounting holes, probably intended for a high capacity drive, made room for the switch on top of the drive, with the sensitive surface against the upper drive surface, held in place by a piece of Armaflex foam. You have to bend the connectors on the switch as otherwise there is not enough room. Test the circuit by heating the switch with your soldering iron, with the power on to the drive. When the thermostat is heated, the fan should start and run for a couple of seconds. Until now the fan hasn’t started up as I seldom use programs that use the drive intensively, but it’s nice to know that it is there when it is needed. I also fitted a dust-filter outside the fan, just to keep the inside clean. (I haven’t checked with Oak but I’m pretty certain that doing this would invalidate your warranty. Ed.) 4.9 No impact printers! 4.9 The next step to silent computing is getting rid of noisy impact printers, such as daisywheel printers and dot-matrix printers, or put them in another room where no one is forced to listen to the racket. 4.9 Most laserprinters emit ozone, that is harmful to your health, usually have a noisy fan and are quite expensive. The modern ink-jet printer are quiet and less expensive than lasers, but are they good enough for a small office or the dedicated amateur? 4.9 Canon BJ-330 − Top of the range 4.9 Having used a KX-P1124, a typical 24-pin dot-matrix printer, for a year or so, I have found the print quality when printing Impression files quite amazing, good enough for the odd fanzine (fan magazine? Ed) or other non-commercial work. It has a weakness and that is NOISE and lots of it! 4.9 So when Canon Sweden kindly lent me a BJ-330, their biggest ink-jet printer, suitable for up to A3 format, I unpacked the huge boxes eagerly. 4.9 Everything taped down 4.9 The amazing number of pieces of reinforced tape that holds everything down on the printer and sheetfeeder must surely be gross overkill, but certainly nothing comes adrift! 4.9 There were three manuals included, one for us Swedes, one for French, German and English users and one Programmer’s Manual in English. All these were flawlessly translated from Japanese; quite a feat! 4.9 The printer is quite handsome in grey plastic, with logos and control panel text in a darker grey. The only coloured items to be found are the yellow and green LEDs that adorn the control panel! 4.9 No low-level control 4.9 In contrast to the earlier bubble-jets from Canon (the BJ-10e and the BJ-130e) there is no possibility of low-level control of the printer, so the printer driver for the BJ-130e, available from EFF, does not work. Instead, the built-in Epson LQ-850 emulation is used with an Archimedes computer, as with my old Panasonic printer, so I didn’t change a thing on the computer, just set the dip-switches on the printer according to the manual. 4.9 The printer can have two font cards, so in addition to the fonts built- in, you can add a number of fonts. Very useful for First Word Plus users, but of little importance to Impression users. 4.9 Printing 4.9 It is imperative that the printer is on-line before you tell the computer to print a document, otherwise it refuses to function. This is not so with my dot-matrix printer, but on the other hand that doesn’t flush the print buffer if you abort printing (making a mess of the next print job) − so it is just a small inconvenience: To get things going you abort the printing, set the printer on-line and start the printing job once again. 4.9 Printing by dropping on the RISC-OS printer icon is the fastest I have seen! Printing Impression files is another matter − it will not enter Guiness Book of Records − but it is not the printer’s fault! 4.9 The printer outpaces an A3000! 4.9 As the printer still is faster than my A3000 manages to send the bits to the printer, the printer head parks every five lines or so, leading to striped images, especially when printing large illustrations. Reading the PRM and the Impression manual and following their advice didn’t help − no amount of Fontcache nor a huge system sprite area will solve the problem (An A540 would!). 4.9 The solution is to let the printer driver print to a file first, then send the finished bit-image to the printer. An A4 page can easily become bigger than 800K so you have to use a huge RAM-disc or your hard-disc for a perfect result. 4.9 To get the optimum result, you should use the LQ-850 emulation set to 360 x 360 dpi. If you want to use less ink, you just use the control panel to set the printer to HS, high speed. It makes the images a bit grey, but that might be the only solution if the paper doesn’t soak up all the ink! When the ink is fresh it normally is quite wet and needs to dry before using. So standard fan-fold paper isn’t really up to it. I guess laser printer paper would be perfect. 4.9 The sheetfeeder 4.9 As my fan-fold paper wasn’t useable, the ink spreading radially in the paper to make the result a mess, I had to use the sheet-feeder. 4.9 This is very straight-forward to install and functions perfectly, even with just one sheet of paper in the bin. There is even a possibility to fit a second bin, if need be. In short, flawless in operation! 4.9 Conclusion 4.9 I have never used a quieter printer than the BJ-330, nor one that could print on such big paper (a laser that could do it would cost a small fortune!). 4.9 Using it for draft-printing is a pleasure indeed, as it really flies and the sheet-feeder certainly works well. 4.9 To make originals for printing it is perfect, even if it isn’t as fast as a Laser Direct (far from it!). I don’t think you could see the difference between a page printed with a good laser printer and a page printed with a BJ-300 (for A4) or a BJ-330. I have never seen blacker printing and, with the right paper the result is perfectly all right for professional work. 4.9 The only thing that I did not like was the dip-switches in the back. I have to lean over the printer to change them and they are so very small! Why not have all controls up front? 4.9 Proof! 4.9 It is so good that I’ve sent these two pages to Paul for inclusion in next Archive as a full-spread illustration. Try to see any difference between it and any other page! A 4.9 4.9 Unfortunately, I couldn’t use them, as Tord’s English needed a little adjustment. Take it from me that the printout quality is impressive for a non-laser printer − although I must say that I could tell the difference even between that and a 300 d.p.i. laser. Ed. 4.9 4.9 ShowPage − Poor Man’s PostScript! 4.9 Tord Eriksson 4.9 For some years now, PostScript has been synonymous with DTP and CAP (DeskTop Publishing and Computer Assisted Publishing) because this graphics programming language was developed by Adobe in 1982 just in time to be used by Apple on the then revolutionary Macintosh. 4.9 It has its origin as a programming language for complex three-dimen sional databases (as used in CAD programs) called “Design System”. It then developed into “JaM” (for John Warnock and Martin Newell) at the famous Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (where Windows, Icons, Mice and Pointers were conceived). This was used there as a multi-purpose language in experimental applications as diverse as VLSI design and graphics. 4.9 John Warnock, the leading man behind PostScript started, together with Chuck Geschke, a company called Adobe Systems Incorporated in 1982, that developed the language into a graphics description system and an interpreter for raster based printers such as typesetters and laser printers. 4.9 A flavour of Forth 4.9 Having grown out of a language that inherited many features of Forth, it still keeps to Reverse Polish Notation, that is, you write “12 8 + 20 =” and not “12 + 8 = 20” or “0 0 moveto” not, as in BASIC, “MOVE(0,0)”. 4.9 This is probably the origin of the name of the language, as you add the operand as a post-script. 4.9 Showpage − a PostScript interpreter 4.9 Computer Concepts, famous for their Impression DTP and fast “hard wired” laser printers, have found a niche for turning a dumb, low-cost laser printer into a powerful PostScript printer. They do it by making an Archimedes do the heavy work of interpreting the PostScript file and then sending the bitmap over to the non-PostScript laser printer, such as the LaserDirect Hi-Res. 4.9 The main problem with PostScript lasers has been that they are either very slow or very costly, or both. Some printers can be upgraded to PostScript standard by adding a PostScript card, probably costing anything from a couple of hundred pounds to thousands. The typical price difference of a standard laser printer with and with-out PostScript being £500 for the cheapest and £1000 for the bigger ones − upgrading later is always more expensive! 4.9 So, as an alternative to upgrading your printer, you buy Computer Concepts’ Showpage and can still print your own and others’ PostScript files at a reasonable pace, for less than the cheapest PostScript upgrade since Showpage retails at £149.00. 4.9 A big package 4.9 From Computer Concepts arrived a big box, slightly dented, containing a disc, with the interpreter, some utilities and some PostScript fonts, a manual about the interpreter, a number of registration forms etc and two big books from Adobe. Both these books were entirely made with Post Script, no cutting or pasting performed manually or with the DTP system involved. The result is very impressive! 4.9 Tutorial and cook book 4.9 One of the books is a thick reference manual that contains all the operands etc that are used in PostScript, with numerous examples that shows the language to be a pretty complete programming environment, even if it leans heavily towards graphical applications − I wouldn’t recommend it for arcade-style games! 4.9 The other book is more interesting and consists of two books rolled into one: A tutorial that takes you from the first simple programming example (a line) to the rather complex workings of the image operator and how to get the most out of your Apple LaserWriter, the most widely available PostScript printer. 4.9 Part two is a “cook book” with complete recipes on how to make arrows, dash patterns, arcs (elliptical or not), how to set text as arches, in vertical columns, with small capital letters, how to create new fonts or modify old fonts etc. 4.9 “Program 18 / Making Small Changes to Encoding Vectors” is extra pleasing to a Swede as the text is a quotation in Swedish, made by one of the big names in typography, Valter Falk. 4.9 So there is much to learn about PostScript, especially how to make the most of it because all languages, artificial or not, take a long time to master. 4.9 The interpreter in use 4.9 Not having a PostScript printer, nor even a laser, I was curious about how the complex sample files, that are found on the disc, would print out on a ink jet printer (Canon BJ-330). As the printer is printing faster than my A3000 manages to send the bitmaps, I always send the bitmap to a file first before dumping it to the printer. A primitive printer-spooler, I know, but it prevents the printers time-out parking the head while printing the images, as that always leads to a minute misalignment of the printing head when restarting. With my 24-pin printer, there is no problem because it is much slower. 4.9 I can say, truthfully, that the results are amazing, both due to the complexity of the pictures themselves and due to the fact that the BJ- 330 isn’t made to print in this way. Even a 24-pin matrix printer produces good enough output to be used for proofing of PostScript documents. 4.9 Many of the sample files supplied are so complex that there is no way that you could produce them with any art package I know of. It shows how PostScript can be used as a creative tool, as well as a way of describ ing a piece of text. 4.9 Especially endearing is the way you can use a letter or a word as a mask, so that another text or pattern shines through, the mask being semi-opaque or whatever you want. I would love to have that function added to !DrawPlus, my favourite utility! 4.9 Next: Let us use PostScript! 4.9 To learn a language properly, you have to use it for a long time. I will give you a few small programming examples in the next part of this exploration into the world of PostScript. 4.9 (To avoid stepping on any sore toes and because US companies love to sue, I hasten to add that PostScript is registered trademark of Adobe Systems Incorporated.) A 4.9 4.9 (This is a VERY professional package and I reckon that Jonathan Marten could have made quite a bit of money by selling it professionally. (Mind you, Acorn might have had something to say about that!) Still, if you are using Draw1½ or DrawPlus, why not send Jonathan something to show your appreciation − especially if, like Barry, you are using it in the course of your work. Draw1½ is available on Shareware Nº34 but this latest version, DrawPlus, is so good that we are making it available as one of the programs on Careware Nº13 which is now available. Ed.) 4.9 4.9 The Archimedes Speaks 4.9 Robert Chrismas 4.9 Robert looks here at PEP Associates’ SpeechSystem (£25) and Superior Software’s Speech! (£19.95 or £19 through Archive). Two more speech programs are now just about ready: ARCticulate from 4th Dimension and DT-Talk from DT Software. Robert will look at these and report back as soon as he can. 4.9 Children can understand and speak English long before they learn to read and write. For most people, speech remains a more ‘natural’ form of communication. It is not surprising that so much effort has been devoted to enabling computers to produce and recognise speech. Computing experts soon found that it was easier to get computers to speak than to recognise and ‘understand’ speech. (The same is true for people but for different reasons.) 4.9 The clearest computer speech is obtained using samples of a person’s speech, in effect using the computer as a digital recorder. Whole sentences can sound very natural but sampled sounds require lots of data so the number of sentences you can store is limited. It is possible to store individual words and to combine them to make sentences (you may remember Acorn’s early attempts to do this using Kenneth Kendall’s voice). However the vocabulary is still limited by the size of the computer memory. Also, once you begin to work with words instead of whole sentences, the speech begins to sound mechanical because of the difficulties of reproducing the natural patterns of rhythm, pitch and stress which usually reinforce the meaning of the utterance. Even the sounds of words may change in natural speech to facilitate pronunciation of some sound sequences. 4.9 Spoken English must include a high level of redundancy. If we listen to a sixteen stone male for Newcastle speaking over the telephone and a seven stone female cockney with a lisp shouting in the street outside the window we can understand both while still hearing the differences between them. Provided that the sounds have certain similarities with normal human speech, they are comprehensible even when it is clearly non-human, as anyone who has listened to Dr Who or Mr Punch well knows. 4.9 Phonemes 4.9 In English, we recognise about 50 unique sounds which allow us to identify words. These sounds are called phonemes. The phonemes are divided roughly into: 4.9 consonants e.g. the ‘b’ sound in ‘bat’ 4.9 vowels e.g. the ‘o’ sound in ‘dog’ 4.9 If a computer can utter these phonemes reasonably accurately, it can produce recognisable speech with an unlimited vocabulary. 4.9 Since these sounds have a fairly simple structure, it is not necessary to work with fragments of sampled speech − the computer can synthesise the sounds. 4.9 The programs 4.9 Superior Software and PEP have both produced programs which speak using synthesised phonemes. The packages sound different and they have different features. Each package includes: 4.9 • Documentation 4.9 • A desktop front end 4.9 • A module to convert English words into phoneme codes 4.9 • A module to convert phoneme codes into sounds 4.9 The packaging and documentation 4.9 Speech! comes in a CD pack with a single page of documentation and advertisements. The text refers you to help files on the disk which are more extensive. It is important to read the help files if only to learn that you should not attempt to write to the (protected) disk. The help files contain enough information to use the programs but they assume some background knowledge. In the worst case, the text refers to the ‘second formant centre frequency’ without explanation. You can get some idea of what it is by changing the frequency and listening to the effect, but more information would be helpful here. 4.9 SpeechSystem has a 54 page A5 manual. The manual is well written and it includes a helpful introduction to the linguistic background to the program. It is disarmingly frank about its limitations. In a discussion of the difference between the sound of ‘lead’ in ‘lead pipes’ and ‘lead singers’ it says that the pronunciation depends on the meaning of the sentence which ‘...places the problem firmly in AI country, and beyond the scope of SpeechSystem in its current form’. Once you have installed SpeechSystem by entering your name, you can back up the disk. This form of protection seem to be the best compromise between user friendliness and copyright protection. 4.9 Neither package enables you to create speech fragments which can be freely distributed, so you can only give your creations to other people who have bought the programs. 4.9 Speech! front end 4.9 If you load the main program, !Speech!, and drag a text file to the program icon, the file will be read aloud. A window allows you to enter a line of words or phonemes to be spoken. The window also gives you control over the pitch, speed, level and both the second and the lower formant frequency (they affect the vowel sounds). 4.9 The !Sp_Dict application allows you to create new Speech! modules with modified pronunciation dictionaries. !Sp_Demo shows off the features of Speech! and includes talking pictures. Finally there is a drill and practice spelling program (educational theorists collapse in horror!). 4.9 SpeechSystem front end 4.9 Like !Speech! !PEP_Text will read text files dropped on to the icon. The text appears in a window with a set of tape recorder like controls. !PEP_ Text can also speak words (or characters) as you type them, as I type this this into First Word Plus it is speaking each word. Another option causes any system text under the pointer to be read, so, for example, you can point to the file names in a filer window and hear each one spoken. 4.9 !PEP_Word allows you to create/edit a pronunciation dictionary. There are also two demos which you are free to distribute. One of the demos is included on the Archive 4.8 program disk; the speech quality is identical to SpeechSystem. 4.9 Words to phonemes translation 4.9 Beware of heard, a dreadful word, 4.9 That looks like beard and sounds like bird, 4.9 And dead: it’s said like bed not bead, 4.9 For Goodness’ sake, don’t call it deed! 4.9 Watch out for meat and great and threat, 4.9 They rhyme with suite and straight and debt 4.9 In written English, spelling is determined by etymology not pronuncia tion. Of course, many words are spoken as they are spelt and most of the rest are covered by rules which leave only a few exceptions to be learnt by heart. People use rules to help spell words they have no difficulty pronouncing. For computer speech, the text is given, the rules must indicate how to pronounce the words. 4.9 SpeechSystem seems to have some powerful rules built into the program. If it fails to pronounce a word accurately you can create and edit a translation dictionary which is contained in !PEP_Lib using the !PEP_Word program. The dictionary is a list of words and the phoneme equivalents. The dictionary can only handle complete words, so if a word can take a number of suffixes and/or prefixes, each instance must be entered. The documentation avoids drawing attention to this requirement by using place names for its examples. 4.9 In the Speech! program, dictionary entries can deal with parts of words and they may include wild cards so one rule can cover many instances. For example ‘i>#e_IY|’ makes the ‘i’ before ‘<consonant>e’ long as in ‘line’ and ‘time’. Entries can even specify changes in pitch within a word. Because the Speech! dictionary is more versatile than that used by SpeechSystem, I think it would be possible to use it to create a dictionary to cope reasonably with words from a foreign language. 4.9 Changing the dictionary is less straightforward than with SpeechSystem. You must copy !Sp_ Dict, then use !Edit (or similar) to change the dictionary in the application. The format given in the !Help file is wrong but it is easy to work out the correct rules by examining the file. When you have changed the dictionary, SP_Dict will create a new Speech! module. 4.9 As they are supplied both programs seem to aim for ‘Received Pronuncia tion’ (RP), the accent associated with educated people, the south east of England, the BBC World Service and Radio 3. Since this is a long way from my native Hampshire accent it was quite brave of Paul to send me these programs. With both programs, you can produce more accurate speech (or regional accents) by spelling phonetically (spelng foneticly). 4.9 Speech using phonemes 4.9 Both programs allow you to enter speech as a sequence of phonemes. With Speech you use *SAY for words and *SPEAK for phonemes. SpeechSystem’s *UTTER allows you to embed phonemes in ordinary text but the method of indicating phonemes is less compact. 4.9 *SAY TOKEN Speech! words 4.9 *SPEAK TOWKOXN Speech! phonemes 4.9 *UTTER TOKEN PEP words 4.9 *UTTER {{ /t//ow//k//ax//n/}} PEP phonemes 4.9 The programs use different letter codes to indicate phonemes. Speech! uses its own codes, apparently based on, but not identical to, those used by the BBC version of the program. Some of the sounds are rather hard to place. The help file gives ‘OH’ as the first vowel sounds in ‘colour’ and ‘polo’; but these are different sounds in RP and most regional accents. SpeechSystem uses a standard code called ‘Arpabet’. The documentation includes a table to convert from the International Phonetic Alphabet into Arpabet, so you can easily translate the pronunciation given in a dictionary into a form which the program can use. 4.9 SpeechSystem allows you to specify the overall pitch of the speech as part of a SWI. To change the pitch of individual phonemes you must alter bytes in the phoneme buffer directly. 4.9 Speech! offers OSCLIs and SWIs to set the overall volume and pitch as well as the formant frequencies. You can include numbers within a phoneme sequence to control the pitch of each phoneme, values 1−8 are speaking pitches, 10−57 cause the phoneme to be sung. Creating a song is fun but, to keep the tempo vowels must often be doubled or trebled. Even a short song takes a long time to enter, but it is possible to get results much better than the example, ‘Daisy Daisy’. (This was, no doubt, inspired by HAL in 2001!) 4.9 In everyday speech, a change in volume, stress, is used to emphasise meaning. Neither program makes it easy to copy natural speech stress patterns but changes in pitch can be used for similar effects. 4.9 Quality 4.9 I wrote a program to allow listeners to compare the sounds of the programs and used twelve people, who had not heard the programs before, as subjects. To try to standardise the test, I use RP for all phonetic speech and I did not use any variations in pitch which would have depended on my own preferences. The results of blind trials showed that all the subjects found that Speech! sounded more ‘natural’ than SpeechSystem. This was probably influenced by the way Speech! runs the words together while SpeechSystem pauses between each word, but the pronunciation of individual words was also a factor. Speech entered as phonemes was not preferred significantly to words translated into phonemes by the programs, which indicates that both programs did a reasonable job of translating words into phonemes. When subjects heard a single word with no clues to its meaning they found it very difficult to identify the word when it was spoken with either program (about 30% of words were correctly identified). Afterwards, many commented that both programs sounded very mechanical. One said that Speech! sounded just like the BBC version and was surprised that the Archimedes could not do any better. I think I could have made some improvements to the examples provided with Speech! by tinkering with pitch etc, but there were not many ways of improving the SpeechSystem examples. 4.9 Summary 4.9 I enjoyed using both programs and I think they are good value. Both programs sound mechanical but Speech! less so than SpeechSystem. Speech! allows more variation of, and better control over, pitch and sound. SpeechSystem has better documentation and a better front end and the standard phoneme codes are more convenient. A 4.9 4.9 A Taste of APL 4.9 Alan Angus 4.9 In my first article I introduced the idea of using I-APL to explore the basic idea of functions. The example below uses the i function to assign the numbers 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 to variable S. The outer product operator “o.” can then be used to make a multiplication table based on S, “So.xS”, or an addition table, “So.+S”. Other tables can be made by using S with another vector such as B shown in the examples. 4.9 In the following examples, a set of values for a quadratic function are stored in variable V and this is used with R, which consists of the integers from −1 to 8, to give some crude graphical representations of the quadratic function. The “o.” operator is used to set up tables of all the combinations of elements of V with those of R. 4.9 The first table uses “=” to test for equality, plotting 1 when they are equal and 0 when not equal. The second table uses a ‘less than or equal to’ test to produce a bar chart and the third table is a little more clever in that it uses indexing on the string ‘*’ to plot with the ‘ ’ and ‘*’ characters instead of 0 and 1. 4.9 I-APL does have access to better plotting facilities than this through the VDU drivers, but because of the implementation method used, it is rather slow. The screen dump shows a plot of a triangle transformed several times about the centre of the axes. 4.9 SETUP 4.9 SHOW C 4.9 REPT 5 4.9 4.9 4.9 4.9 SHOW plots the shape on screen using data stored in matrix C. The shape is transformed by applying a transformation matrix T using matrix multiplication, e.g “T+.xC”. This is used in line 5 of the procedure REPT which applies the transformation T a given number of times, plotting the new shape each time. 4.9 The procedures TIN and CIN can be used to input new transformation and shape matrices. 4.9 I am not trying to teach APL here, and so I will not explain the operation of these routines in any detail. The strange symbols used by APL are off-putting at first, but they are a powerful extension to the familiar symbolism of mathematics and well worth exploring. Get hold of a copy of the I-APL interpreter and an introductory book on APL and dive in! 4.9 All the functions listed here, plus others for saving screens to disk and making OSCLI calls etc, are in the workspace PLOT. I make no claims for originality in anything I have done. Some of the examples are lifted directly from Kenneth Iverson’s “Introducing APL to Teachers”, others are based on material from Howard Peelle’s “APL, An Introduction” and the I-APL manual. 4.9 Norman Thomson’s book, APL Programs for the Mathematics Classroom, is an excellent source of ideas and routines for using APL in mathematics education. This book, as well as many others, and the I-APL interpreter are available from, I-APL Ltd, 2 Blenheim Road, St. Albans AL1 4NR. A 4.9 4.9 DTP Clip Art 4.9 David Crofts 4.9 This article covers a variety of issues inherent in using Clip Art with Impression and other DTP packages. 4.9 A few months ago I wrote to Paul requesting assistance with sources of Christian Clip Art to use in Church publications. He placed a request in the Help! section and help duly arrived. My grateful thanks to all who responded. I hope that this article will in some way provide assistance for them in return. 4.9 I intend the text to be of general as well as specific interest, so all DTP Clip Art users please read on! 4.9 Sources 4.9 Clip Art is available commercially and through Public Domain libraries. Non-computer material is also available but will need to be scanned. A large selection can be found outside the Archimedes world in PC format − in fact the most comprehensive library is available, at a price, in PC Vector (Draw) format. It is possible to translate some of these formats, so I will include details of which format to choose later. 4.9 Formats 4.9 The two formats for Archimedes images are Paint or sprite format and Draw or object-oriented graphics. In the PC world, these correspond to ‘bit-mapped’ and ‘vector’ graphics respectively. Sprite/bit-mapped images are much more widely available and cheaper than Draw or vector format, but suffer from the problem of ‘jaggies’ − rough edges when enlarged and printed. 4.9 Draw / Vector graphics images are much smoother and produce almost infinitely scalable images, and correspondingly better results. 4.9 It is worth mentioning here that converting sprites into Draw format is now possible with Midnight Tracer. Early reports suggest that it has limitations, it may be worth waiting for reviews before trying. (See the comments on page 14. Ed.) 4.9 Archimedes clip art 4.9 The first place to look for material is general clip art. Many images with non-religious subject matter can be relevant. A great deal is available through Public Domain libraries such as Archive Shareware and Careware! APDL of Cleveland, in addition to a wealth of sprite and scanned images include two religious sprite format discs. Midnight Graphics publish a five disc set of Draw format Clip Art − non of it specifically religious. Others of general interest are G.A. Herdman − Draw and sprite; Micro Studio who are building up an impressive collection library of Draw and Sprite pictures, many with education in mind; and David Pilling who has some interesting sprite images, some in colour. 4.9 Don’t be surprised when collecting Public Domain material to receive identical files from different libraries! Public Domain seems to mean that anybody can sell you anything so long as it is free of copyright. 4.9 PC material 4.9 Another valuable source of material is the PC world. Some PC clip art is translatable into Archimedes format. I will detail my experience so far. 4.9 Firstly, by far the most comprehensive selection of religious Clip Art available, as far as I have been able to ascertain, is from MGA Softcat of Rye. Their Religious Special Edition Clip Art is available in Micrografix.DRW and other formats. It converts into Draw / vector images, but at a price! (£149.95 +VAT) The selection would satisfy most needs of most people for quite a long time. I have a photocopy of the selection, but have not been able to afford to purchase it! At a more realistic price is their set of Christian Symbols in bit-mapped format at £29.95. 4.9 Religious Clip Art is available on subscription from Beulah Graphics of London SW8. It can be supplied in TIFF, PCX and IMG format, all bit- mapped (sprite) images. The range of images is mixed, the majority specifically religious or biblical. Their PCX files presented transla tion problems, but fortunately they were able to provide TIFF as an alternative format. 4.9 I have seen an advert only for Vector Clip Art from “Words and Pictures” of Banbury. 4.9 Converting from PC format 4.9 To convert from PC to Archimedes format it is advisable to have to hand PC Dir, Translator, a set-type utility and Paint. 4.9 In my (limited) experience, with advice courtesy of Jim Markland, it seems best to try to obtain images in TIFF format. 4.9 1. If necessary, unpack these using the PC Emulator (with Beulah Graphics at least). 4.9 2. Move them across into Archimedes media using PC Dir (available on Careware 7). 4.9 3. Use Set-type (Shareware 19 or 23) to change to TIFF type (always assuming the file was a TIFF file in the first place!). This is filetype FF0. 4.9 4. Load Translator (Careware 7) onto the icon bar. 4.9 5. Double click on TIFF file. The screen will probably change to a strange grey mode and a box containing the converted image appears. 4.9 6. Click <menu> over the image. Run along the Save line to the list of save options. I usually choose ‘Whole (scaled)’ as the images may well need some alteration before saving (who needs an oval moon?). 4.9 7. Enter a filename into the box which appears, then, after <select> or <return>, the mouse pointer appears with the image completely under your power. A box giving the coordinates of the image you are about to save is appended to the pointer for precise scaling. It is possible to alter it to any shape size or scale you require (clever software − Translator) before clicking <select> to save it. (If you have made a mistake with the filename this is the moment of truth.) 4.9 8. GOTO 5 (who needs structured programming?) UNTIL all converted. 4.9 Using PC files in DTP 4.9 On conversion (not religious!), some files’ whites are not ‘Persil’ bright. They seem to have a grey dotted background which is indistin guishable from white to the naked eye. Usually this only becomes evident on printing, when the image, rather than merging neatly into the white background of the paper, suddenly acquires a grey rectangular outline. Nasty! The solution? Load Paint. Use the replace colour option (a tipping up paint pot) to fill the ‘grey white’ with real white. Now your image is squeaky clean. 4.9 Other material 4.9 Pictures and features with a Christian theme, which could be scanned or cut and pasted with real glue, are available on subscription from two main sources: Church News Service and Christian Education Ltd. The material includes monthly titles, headers, captions, articles for adults and children, pictures, puzzles and jokes. (I preferred the CNS material for a British audience; CEL is Australian and has a distinctly trans- Atlantic feel.) Also Kevin Mayhew of Rattlesden produce three books of “Instant Art for the Church Magazine.” Again, these could be scanned. 4.9 One respondent sent in some clever cartoons his sister had drawn. So any local artist may be pressed into service, even if the thought of a computer terrifies them. 4.9 See other articles for those who have experience of scanners. 4.9 What next? 4.9 Now those magazines, posters, leaflets, publicity materials, children’s worksheets, service cards hymn sheets will be enlivened and brightened by illustrations. For an example of use, Charles Constantine sent in his Church Magazine liberally illustrated with pictures and adverts. More generally available are the Patterns for Worship sample service cards from Church House Publishing which show how service material can be vitalised with illustrations. 4.9 Sources 4.9 MGA Softcat, 41, Cinque Ports Street, Rye, East Sussex. TN31 7AD (0797- 226601) 4.9 Beulah Graphics, 276, South Lambeth Road, London. SW8 1UJ (071-622-8924) 4.9 Christian Education Ltd., Unit C, 41, Dace Road, London. E3 2NG 4.9 Church News Service, 37b, New Cavendish Street, London. W1M 8JR 4.9 APDL Public Domain Library, Mr Peter Sykes, 96, Lanehouse Road, Thornaby, Cleveland. TS17 8EA 4.9 Kevin Mayhew Ltd., Rattlesden, Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk. IP30 0SZ 4.9 Words & Pictures, 30, Parsons Street, Banbury, Oxon. OX16 8LY (0295- 258335) 4.9 Midnight Graphics from Dabhand Computing Ltd., 5 Victoria Lane, Whitefield, Manchester. M25 6AL 4.9 G. A. Herdman Educational Software, 43, St. Johns Drive, Clarborough, Retford, Notts. DN22 9NN (0777-700918) 4.9 David Pilling, PO Box 22, Thornton Cleveleys, Blackpool. FY5 1LR. A 4.9 4.9 Minerva Business Accounts 4.9 Mick Burrell 4.9 The Archimedes computer is a highly sophisticated machine and there is now a wealth of software available to utilise its capabilities to the full, but it still has not found a large following in the IBM stronghold of the business world possibly because of the lack of choice of business accounts software. Enter Minerva with their new business accounts package. 4.9 Initial impressions 4.9 Business accounts software, by its very nature, must be very complex but Minerva have worked hard and have, I feel, been successful in making it easy to use. Perhaps more than any other software, an accounts package will be used by people with little or no interest in computers other than as a tool. With this in mind, Minerva have presented the package well with an easy to follow (if a little daunting) manual. It comes as five separate modules − Invoicing, Sales Ledger, Purchase Ledger, Nominal Ledger and Stock Management (as yet no Wages package) − each of which will stand alone or integrate with any others you may have. 4.9 The manuals are well written in the now familiar style of tutorial and ‘main’ sections. Having read Paul’s comments about a reviewer who admitted to not reading the manual, I dived straight in to the tutorial section. 4.9 The programs seems to run quite happily from wherever you store them. I have put them in a directory called Accs_Bus in the root directory of my 440‘s hard disc. Opening the directory and double clicking on the application’s icon installs it on the icon bar. Clicking on the icon takes you into the main menu where you accept the date taken from the internal clock or enter another date (as is the case if you follow the tutorial). 4.9 Each of the manuals follows the same format and often uses very similar data so that if you have bought more than one module, the operations soon become familiar. Minerva have included some mistakes for you to type in and then they show you how easy it is to correct them! A good start − I was quite capable of making my own mistakes and it was nice to know already how to put them right. The manual is very insistent that you work through the tutorial section before trying to tailor the package to suit your own needs. This is well worth the effort, particu larly if you are familiar with similar packages on PCs, as the tutorials aim to explore most of the facilities available. In practice, I felt that even having worked through the tutorials, this package offers so much that I would still be discovering ‘new’ facilities after quite prolonged use. With this in mind, unless this review runs to a similar length to the manual, it can only really be my initial impressions. 4.9 Invoicing 4.9 The main screen shows which module you are working in, the date and, in this case, the invoice number you are looking at or working on. The ‘card’ itself is a smaller area which scrolls around quite happily under this heading. This is not multi-tasking and does not use the conven tional windows but this presents no problem (to me at least!) and returns you to the desktop when you have finished. Typing in data is quite straight forward. From the name you put on the invoice (a minimum of three letters is all that is required for the system to find the customer) the system checks to see if it is an account that already exists and offers you the choice of opening a new account, making it a cash customer (meaning one you will probably only deal with this once), one or more customers who fit the description you typed in or re- entering the data. 4.9 For example, if you typed in ‘Fre’ as your name, the system would offer ‘Free Range Eggs Ltd’ as well as ‘Fred Bloggs PLC’ if these were already on file. You can then choose between them as they will be labelled ‘A’ and ‘B’. Had you typed in ‘Fred’ then only ‘Fred Bloggs PLC’ would have been selected. The option to re-enter data is provided just in case you have made a mistake! One small problem occurred here − pressing <R> to re-enter details worked fine, but pressing <r> left me with a blanked screen which I could not get out of. This aside, entering invoice details is quite straight forward. 4.9 When you print an invoice, multiple copies are available, labelled Invoice, Despatch Note, Office Copy etc. depending on your requirements. These are set up when you get round to designing your own invoice. If you do not require a despatch note, you can set up the system so that you do not have one! One or two things are fixed however. For example, the system uses things like Invoice Number and so each invoice must have one! Not a serious limitation I hope. For the system to work properly, you should have two drives or a hard disc. Again, I would not imagine anyone prepared to buy and use this kind of software not having that hardware. 4.9 Setting up your own invoice system is not a task to be undertaken lightly. This has nothing to do with the software − it should be approached with the same care and attention you would use to design any of your business forms. You do, however, need to consider how the system will work best for you. Can I add to Minerva’s plea − work through the tutorial first. I did, and yet I still made a few errors and had to start my design again. Only time will tell if a design is perfect once set up. An ‘Invoice Reformat’ option is, however, provided which will allow minor modifications even after the files have been in use. The system seems to be so versatile that it will probably cater for most needs with very little work. 4.9 Sales and purchase ledgers 4.9 Whilst these can again be stand alone packages, they will link to the others and, by their very nature, are similar to each other in task and operation. The tutorial sections are again very informative and take you through finding a particular customer/supplier by both account number and name, both methods being very fast. As with invoicing, a very detailed analysis is possible to keep track of the flow of goods into and out of your business (but see stock later) and leads to very detailed management reports (again see later). Movement around the files is similar to invoicing, although purely as a personal preference, I would like to use one key to gain access to the individual accounts and another to return to the menu. The <escape> key is used for both, but I have to admit to getting used to it even in the short time I have used the package. 4.9 One feature I liked particularly was the possibility of using of a small negative discount (2p in the example) to correct for a small over payment by a customer. I have never really understood why customers do this, but they do! In some accounts programs, you have to use the positive/negative adjustment procedure to make things balance. This effort is rarely worth 2p! 4.9 All of the usual features are here allowing simple reports of who owes you what and for how long (or vice versa!) but it can go far beyond this. (The manual has four pages devoted to explaining how reports can be produced.) One important report menu option is ‘Second Criteria’ which is set as default for a balance greater than zero, but is used with variables like ‘lim’ (the current credit limit) to produce reports of customers whose balance exceeds their credit limit by an amount you specify. 4.9 Reports generally can be short, medium or long, referring to the amount of information given. The short gives you the basic facts, i.e. the account number, name and amounts outstanding currently, for 30 days, 60 days and over 90 days. The long report prints in addition to this, details like the full name and address, your contact within the company, their credit limit, turnover and details of each transaction. In short this exploits what a computer is good at − fast accurate data retrieval to enable you to keep track of your business. 4.9 Nominal ledger 4.9 The nominal ledger program carries on this theme. In it you can record every transaction your business makes but this can, of course, be automatically taken from the sales and purchase ledgers if you have those modules. The ledger will allow over 8000 accounts (I have taken Minerva’s word for this!) and comes with some of these set up to help get you started. You can print a profit and loss, balance sheet or a trial balance at any time. Comprehensive report facilities are available as well, and your accounting period can be set up to be anything from 12 to 18 months, so that if you are setting up a new business and will have your accounts on computer from day one, then this package can handle the first year trading being longer than one year. 4.9 Assuming that more people will have access to the computer than you would wish to have access to your accounts, a password facility is provided. 4.9 The tutorial is again well laid out and first of all introduces you to some accounts which, being used as headers for profit and loss reports, cannot be altered. They are a black card with white text to distinguish them from the normal blue card with white text. (Anyone using a monochrome monitor may find that this difference is not so obvious.) 4.9 Making alterations is much the same as in the other modules. Entries to the cash book are quite straight forward, as are the journal entries. As you would (probably) expect, the credit and debit totals for journal entries are shown at the bottom of the screen and must balance before you leave the posting. 4.9 It is, however, the reporting facilities that make this module really worthwhile. If you do your own trial balance manually or have watched your accounts clerk do it, you will know that hours can be spent looking for tiny amounts which stop the ledger balancing! To have this available at the touch of a key must make computerising your accounts worthwhile on its own! Period end and year end accounts are just as easily produced making it possible to have complete financial control over your business. I know of some businesses (no names naturally!) where the end of year figures their accountant produces are always a surprise. With this package you can produce these simply and quickly whenever you require them. 4.9 Stock management 4.9 At first sight, this module may not seem to fit in with the other four but Minerva are at pains to point out that they have called it Stock Management rather than Stock Control. The difference is in the amount of information this module is designed to supply when compared to more mundane stock control programs. The facilities you would expect are all here − stock levels, valuations, minimum levels etc but it also provides facilities to print out orders to send to suppliers and what is, according to Minerva, a unique facility to produce a pareto graph to ‘highlight those stock items which account for a majority of your cashflow and hence require careful monitoring to maximise efficiency of your finances’. 4.9 In use, the program not only gives you accurate details of the items you currently hold in stock but makes suggestions as to what should be ordered and in what quantity. These are based on things like maximum and minimum stock levels you have supplied, as well as stock movement and delivery lead times. A nice touch is that the manual tries to explain how the computer makes these predictions so that you can tailor it to suit your own business and its way of working. At all times, you still retain control over what the computer is about to do. For example, when it suggests an order to a supplier, you can manually adjust the amount if you wish to. This allows you to deal with seasonal fluctuations, new product launches, sales variations due to the weather or a thousand others things that a computer could not possibly predict but which you have to cope with to run a successful business. 4.9 If your business is in buying and selling items then this information will be vital and, of course, the computer will keep accurate records and not rely on the tapping your head “it’s all up here” approach. This is a good stock management program and it will do the job admirably. 4.9 Conclusions 4.9 It is likely that anyone interested in this package will be considering computerising their manual accounts or possibly starting a new business. Readily available information on performance gives you extra control that over your business − the value of this cannot be over stated. Minerva have made this their main objective in producing these packages and have succeeded. Together, they will make your accountant’s audit much simpler and quicker which will, of course, save you money − probably more than the cost of the package on the first audit! If you are currently using a similar package on a P.C., then I doubt that there are useful facilities you will find missing in Minerva’s version. 4.9 A package of this complexity cannot be learned from scratch in five minutes and to get the most out of it will require time and a little effort. If you have experience of similar packages, the transition should be relatively painless. A well written and presented piece of software in which I found very little to complain about. 4.9 Well done Minerva! A 4.9 4.9 Shareware Disc Nº39 4.9 Geoff Scott 4.9 Shareware Nº39 has two sections; an educational one and a ‘various utilities’ one which occupies about twice as much space. 4.9 Algorithms 4.9 In a directory called Algorithms are four mathematical programs. 4.9 The first, GraSort, demonstrates to the user in a visual manner four popular algorithms for array sorting. It demonstrates the RISC-OS HeapSort SWI, a simple shellsort routine, an inefficient but useful SelectSort routine and the fastest known QuickSort routine. 4.9 PatMatch is a program holding three routines which were specifically designed to search for a text string within a piece of text. For those of you who are interested, the three search routines are a brute force method, a Knuth-Morris (KMP), and a Boyer-Moore. 4.9 The third program, Travels, claims that it will “demonstrate the modern simulated annealing technique” to attack the ‘travelling salesman’ problem. This type of problem is said to fall into the category of what a mathematician would call NP-Complete − taking a long time for a realistic number of variables. In English, this program will attempt to find the shortest route from the start, through several cities and then home again. 4.9 ZerFunc is said to search for the complex zeros of an arbitrary function of one variable using the Muller method. The Muller method was chosen over the Newton-Raphson one as it is more robust. As supplied, the program will graphically display the zeros of a polynomial, although full instructions are contained within the program if you find it necessary to change the function calculated. 4.9 The four programs within this section were all produced very well, with graphics used throughout to good effect. The only bad point I can make is the lack of multi-tasking, although all four return you safely to the desktop. 4.9 Chemistry 4.9 This program is an A-level science tutor which concentrates upon the building blocks and elements of matter − although to a far higher stage than GCSE. I took a brief look at this program and it is written in a way that makes it a pleasure in some ways to work with. However, the lack of a quit option is a bit of a drawback, although one can be added simply by altering the error handler. In short, if you are doing A-level chemistry − or even GCSE for that matter − I would recommend this disc just for the one program. 4.9 Desktop 4.9 The desktop directory is the holder of four draw files which are intended to help the user to access a menu option several layers deep by providing a reference chart which may be printed. The files can be printed out using the standard printer drivers, although on the screen, I noticed that they looked slightly cramped and confusing − a fact that would be replicated on paper. The use of these files would depend upon how confident you are with the Archimedes desktop and the Welcome suite of software − they could be ideal in an educational establishment or while introducing someone to the machine. 4.9 Economics 4.9 The two programs within this directory are for calculating compound interest and retail prices. The two programs have been written with many functions and if a use exists for them then they would be perfectly adequate. 4.9 Graphs 4.9 If you are fed up of graphs with very strange scale intervals then this program is for you! After looking at the values of the data, the program will fit the graph neatly onto a mode 0 screen. 4.9 Maths 4.9 7K worth of a mathematical routines library, with many functions including part-arrays, hyperbolic functions, sines, cosines, cartesians and virtually anything else you could ever need. 4.9 Photo 4.9 Two programs: Flash aids you in setting a close up exposure and DofField which aims to provide information about the depth of field of a shot. 4.9 BackSpr 4.9 The first application in the utils directory is BackSpr which takes a sprite and scales it to fill the screen and places the picture within a window at the back of the desktop, creating a backdrop effect. 4.9 Copier 4.9 This is an update of the disc copier on Shareware disc 2. It has a more colourful and graphical layout than the original version. It would appear that the workings of the program have been left alone, apart from making changes to recognise ‘E’ format discs and forcing the target disc to be formatted. 4.9 Compacted screens sequence creator 4.9 This program appears to have been written to facilitate the construction of sequences of pictures which have been compressed in some way. After looking at the modules provided, it is a shame that the front end for creating the sequences is such a violent beast to tame, but the effects I created were outstanding. 4.9 FileUtils 4.9 Fileutils is an application which provides many different utilities for file handling and various other file-associated operations. Operations currently supported are: change file type; a file search which will also search in any archives it encounters; a find space routine, the purpose of which is to find if enough space exits on a disc to hold the intended program. 4.9 FontConv 4.9 Amongst my collection of discs I knew that I had a font or two which came from a PC and, after digging them out, I left the machine to convert one of them. Firstly, the program informed me that every byte was an un-known command, and then it wouldn’t let me return to the desktop − forcing a reset. (It could be useful if you had the right type of PC fonts. Ed.) 4.9 FPEcalc 4.9 A floating point calculator which does not multitask, requires system sprite memory and appears not to do anything I tell it. This program is in fact a 19 digit reverse-polish notation calculator with many functions. 4.9 STtoRhap 4.9 When I bought Tracker and found that it had no printout option, turned to the PD world looking for something to enable me to print the contents of my sound tracker file. STtoRhap appears to be the answer. Sound Tracker files − not Tracker − can be converted into a format that Rhapsody will understand so that they can then be printed. I wouldn’t however recommend trying to play the music from Rhapsody without making a number of changes to the score first. 4.9 Help reader 4.9 This program can be used to prepare help applications for other programs. It has many features such as jumping position using menus or buttons and multitasking in its own window. Excellent for anyone new to a program. 4.9 Overall 4.9 This shareware disc has been carefully compiled and, for £3, you can’t really afford to miss it if you like the look of the programs on it. They are all thoroughly documented and can all be used with relatively little experience. A 4.9 4.9 Risc User Compilation Disc 4.9 Edward Hollox 4.9 When the RU icon is double clicked from the filer window, the icon installs itself on the icon bar and so provides information and a way of loading the selection of programs. 4.9 !ADPC 4.9 Which stands for “Advanced Desktop Presentation Creator”. This utility installs itself on the icon bar and allows you to sequence numbers of sprites using different methods, such as scroll, explode and bounce, by simply dragging the files to the program window. You can then save the sprites, in a compressed form, in an application directory so that double clicking that application gives you the series of sprites interconnected by the different display methods. 4.9 However, you can only sequence mode 12 or mode 13 sprites, which limits the program. Not only this, but the program also tended to spout errors when saving which led me to believe that the program was not thoroughly tested. Well tried, but could do better. 4.9 !aMaze 4.9 The only game on the disc provided welcome respite from the disappoint ment of the previous program. The game is difficult to describe, but is basically a sliding block puzzle where up to four players can slide and then move their piece around the maze to collect various objects. The first person to collect the objects and return to base has won. Objects can be selected to be either from a dungeon, food, computer equipment or detective equipment. There is also a help facility. 4.9 Although simple, this game has good graphics and is certainly a break from shoot-’em-ups. Very good indeed. This game is also included on the Risc User Games Disc, which was reviewed in the January edition of Archive. 4.9 !Appmaker 4.9 A simple application which creates a basic sprite file and a !run file for a application of a specific size. Could be useful, but definitely nothing special. 4.9 !BEdit 4.9 Yawn! Yet another desktop front-end for the BASIC Editor. This one is no different to the millions of other ones I’ve seen in the Public Domain. 4.9 !Clipart 4.9 Draw files of a computer, the Union Jack, a guitar and some bells for inclusion in DTP. 4.9 !CMOSEdit 4.9 Double clicking this, results in a window full of numbers which apparently can be altered to change various CMOS settings. Although there is a help window, I’d stick to !Configure on Applications Disc 1. 4.9 !Encode 4.9 A desktop utility which, by simply dragging files to its icon, can code and decode files using a password system. Simple and very useful. 4.9 !Index 4.9 Only the index files for Risc User volume 3 for use in Arcscan. 4.9 !KeyStrip 4.9 A non-desktop utility which prints fully labelled keystrips on a 9 or 24-pin printer. Useful if, like me, you don’t like making your own. 4.9 !Music 4.9 A selection of music for use with !Maestro, including pieces from Gilbert and Sullivan, Debussy and Bach. 4.9 !Newfonts 4.9 Three outline fonts, Chancellor, Katyo and Chinese, which are a useful addition to any DTP package. The fonts are high quality, though they would tend to be used for fancy headings rather than body text. Good, and far cheaper than elsewhere. 4.9 !Palettes 4.9 Colour palettes for better output on colour printers. 4.9 !PC_Disc 4.9 This program, very similar to the program !PCDir on Careware 5, allows the user to read, write, and format MSDOS discs on the desktop. If you have !PCDir, this is nothing special, but is certainly handy if you have the PC emulator and nothing like this program. 4.9 !StickyBD 4.9 This program allows the user to put icons on the background of the desktop, and to change that normally grey background to a pretty picture. A very good program, but it is in the Public Domain, so if you want it, it is bound to be on a Shareware disc or in any PD library’s catalogue. 4.9 !Textprint 4.9 This allows text to be printed on an Epson FX-80 compatible printer in the background on the desktop, and is similar in presentation to the Acorn printer drivers. Could be useful. 4.9 !Watchdog 4.9 This excellent utility allows the computer to be vigilant for viruses on a hard or floppy disc. It has three levels of operation, selected from the desktop icon. Grey is no watch, amber stops *Wipe operations and red prevents all disc write operations. There is also an option for cleaning the free space of discs to stop viruses hiding there. 4.9 Conclusion 4.9 Although this is a reasonable disc with some good programs, £12.95 seems rather expensive. If you do not want the outline fonts, you could try a disc from a good public domain library or a Careware or Shareware disc from Archive. They would have programs of equal qualityand you can pass PD discs on to your friends. A 4.9 4.9 Chess Revisited 4.9 Tord Eriksson 4.9 There is one game that has become a classic for computer simulations − and is classic in itself − chess. From the long gone days of ZX80s and IBM 360s to today’s supercomputers and IBM SPARCstations, there has always been a chess program around. Surprisingly few have been available for the RISC-OS user and only one has had a wide distribution − C. Granville’s !Chess, available from David Pilling, P. O. Box. 22, Thornton Cleveleys, Blackpool, FY5 1LR, UK. The price is £5.99, VAT and p&p inclusive. 4.9 Not perfect 4.9 Version 1.00 of !Chess played a competent game of chess but could not in any way be called perfect. It did not realise that, when considering promotion, the option of turning a pawn into something other than a queen is sometimes desirable. Neither did it count the time elapsed very well as a two hour game easily ended up with two minutes or less on the clock! 4.9 If it got into a tight spot, it started to play like a randy young lad on his first date: The grand moves only made the prospects of success even more remote. Looked at positively, it certainly made the game- playing shorter but things were to change... 4.9 Enter version 1.28 4.9 The latest version looks exactly like its predecessors, fully multi- tasking, fully WIMPy etc, but it certainly is a different kettle of fish. 4.9 I did not have too much difficulty in beating the earlier versions but this version is too much for me. It under promotes, it doesn’t loose its marbles when in a tight spot and it seems to me play more quickly. As the clock now functions as advertised, it really can get your adrenalin flowing, as the computer is always miles ahead of you! 4.9 No field test 4.9 I have tested the earlier version of !Chess against chess programs run on Amstrad CPC 6128 and a Spectrum but I have not done it this time as the conclusion is all too evident: a massacre! 4.9 The verdict − unbeatable! 4.9 There are still a few things that could be added to make it perfect − 3D-view, maybe battling pieces as in Battle-Chess (probably copyrighted!) etc, but at the price it is offered I must say that it is surely unbeatable! 4.9 As usual, David Pilling will upgrade your version, if it has been legally obtained, to the latest version, by just sending him a blank disk and an SAE, with enough stamps on! That is better service than that by any other software producer I know of! A 4.9 4.9 Maddingly Hall 4.9 Gareth Bellaby 4.9 Maddingly Hall is a text adventure game from Minerva. The game is set in 1932 and you take on the ‘Bertie Wooster’ character of Bertie Hall who, having lost money betting on the horses, decides to pay a visit to Maddingly Hall and his rich Aunt Agatha. Also currently staying at Maddingly is Veronica, the young woman Bertie loves. Bertie hopes to win the heart of Veronica and persuade Aunt Agatha to part with a little of her money. Apart from these two general objectives, the aims and puzzles of the game are only revealed as the game is played. 4.9 Maddingly Hall needs 544K to start up. It is run from the desktop and will not disrupt existing programs if enough memory is available. The game is written in BASIC and is copy protected. 4.9 The game includes a picture for every location in the game. However, the graphics are occasionally inconsistent with the text, for instance displaying a non-existent window, and there is no facility to turn the graphics off. 4.9 The game is not that difficult and, in that sense, could be suitable for even a novice text adventure player. I say ‘could be’ because the game is let down by some extremely poor programming.The first failing of the game is in its treatment of the many independent game characters. For instance, one game character somehow managed to sit down to dinner whilst simultaneously being trapped in a secret passage and a second game character went through a locked door. Such anomalies completely undermine the spirit of the game. 4.9 Secondly, Maddingly Hall is let down by its often infuriating parser. No synonyms are given for nouns, although a few abbreviations are allowed. The parser unreasonably rejects certain words so that, for instance, you may be informed that you are wearing some “casual clothes” but the parser will only accept the word “cloth”. Most importantly of all, the parser demands certain words which are not given in the game text. For example, at one point during the game you will need to refer to a “brickwall” but this word is not used anywhere in the text. 4.9 The game employs a reasonable level of humour, is based on a good scenario and has a number of interesting puzzles and frustrating red herrings. In particular, I like the way in which the nature of the game unfolds only as it is being played. 4.9 However, I cannot really recommend the game because I found it extremely annoying to be forced to struggle with the parser instead of getting on with the game. A 4.9 Another new Archimedes? 4.10 Rumours are continuing to grow of an impending launch of a major new product from Fulbourn Road. However, Acorn are so tight in their security about new computers (quite rightly) that all I have been able to find out for certain is that the new machine(s) can read 1.44Mbyte PC format discs. (Wow! What startling news!!!) Sorry I can’t tell you any more but as soon as I find out anything more definite, I’ll let you know. Watch this space..... 4.10 Happy holiday! 4.10 Despite the fact that it’s July already and I’ve only had my shorts on one day so far this “summer”, it is the holiday season. In the four years of the life of Archive, we’ve never had more that a week’s holiday at a time. (Big “Ahhh!” for Paul!) We wanted to visit our friends in North Carolina but felt we couldn’t afford the time... but then came Impression II. What we are hoping to do is get the August Archive finished in the next three weeks (contributors, please send your articles in as soon as possible!), dash over to the States for three weeks, dash back and try to get the September issue out as quickly as we can... but it might be a bit late. Please bear with us. Oh, and please be patient with Adrian and Ali as they hold the fort while I’m away. Thanks very much. 4.10 Hope you have a good holiday, too! 4.10 4.10 Products Available 4.10 • A4 paper trays − We can now get hold of spare A4 paper trays for the Laser Direct (Qume) at £66, the Laser Direct Hi-Res (Canon LBP8) at £54 and the Canon LBP4 at £57. It makes life much easier not to have to keep taking headed note paper and plain paper in and out of paper trays − just pull out one tray and replace it with another. This includes putting A5 paper in an A4 paper tray which is explained in the Hints & Tips on page 8. 4.10 • A4 flatbed scanner GT-4000 − Clares have produced an interface and software support to run an Epson GT4000 from an Archimedes computer. The main features are: 50 to 400 d.p.i., 24 bit colour, 256 grey scales, max size 214 x 295 mm, uses serial and bi-directional Centronics interface, full RISC-OS application. The prices are £1799 +VAT for the full system or £715 + VAT for the software and interface board if you already have the GT4000 scanner. (£1955 and £660 respectively through Archive.) 4.10 • A3000 Special Access − Acorn are now providing a package based on the A3000 with Special Needs users in mind. It consists of an A3000 upgraded with serial port and Morley User/Analogue ports, a disc of utilities to facilitate access to the computer for physically disabled users and people with visual impairment, Special Needs overview booklet and a copy of the Special Needs Computing Handbook. You can buy it without a monitor (£679 +VAT) or with an Acorn monitor and a PRES stand (which allows the computer to move about independently of the stand) for £899 +VAT. There is a special price for registered charities or those who are registered disabled − £695 and £953.50 respectively including VAT. Applications forms for these special prices should be available for your local dealer − Archive also has forms and can supply these SA packs. 4.10 • Arc Recorder − Oak Solutions have produced a very cheap system for sound sampling (£29.95 +VAT or £33 through Archive). It consists of a hand held condenser microphone linked to the computer via the printer port(!) and software that generates samples in Armadeus file format. It is also designed to link in with Genesis II and comes with a support module to allow samples to be used within Genesis applications. 4.10 • ARCticulate − The current spate of Archimedes speech generators continues.. 4th Dimension have produced an “animated speech synthesiser” which includes, as well as voices, four faces that speak the words! It can read text files and word processor documents and can be used within your own programs. £24.95 from 4th Dimension or £23 through Archive. 4.10 • ARM3 price drop − There seems to be a bit of price war going on with ARM3’s and so we’ve been able to bring down the price of the Aleph One ARM3 to £420 inc VAT. 4.10 • Careware Nº13 − We have put Jonathan Marten’s improved Draw program, !DrawPlus which was reviewed last month, page 19, as the major item on Careware 13. We have made it a DTP type disc by adding the latest versions of !CGM −>Draw (v2.1) and !Translator (v6.45) and two utilities to convert the other way: !DrwCgm (v1.0) which converts Draw files to CGM files and !Creator (v1.13) which converts sprite files into GIF, TIFF, AIM, PBM files. There is also some Draw clip art: under the heading of biology are 4 week old & 8 week old embryos, digestive system, ear, paramecium, respiratory system, resuscitation, teeth; under the heading of people are cobbler, eskimo, footballer, girl reading, girl riding, magician, painter, singer; and then the rest... bed and breakfast, house, King George V battleship, long ship, Pink Panther, snowman, tree. 4.10 • ClassROM is a new networking product from Oak Solutions. Anyone trying to run an Econet system with Archimedes computers will realise the problem of a class full of pupils trying to load, say, Impression all at the same time. Oak Solutions’ solution(!) is to provide a box to attach to each, or as many as possible, of the Archimedes on the network. This box looks, to the user, like a read-only ROM. In fact, it is a 20M (or bigger if you prefer!) SCSI hard drive which can only be read by them but which can be written to, via the Econet, using special software which, presumably, only the network manager would have access to. You can use this software to put whatever files and applications you want onto whichever stations you want. So, while the kids are out of the way, you could load up various applications onto different stations so that they would be ready at the start of the day for the pupils to use. The pupils would save their data either on their own floppies or via the Econet on the file-server. There is no limit to the number of stations on the network that can have a ClassROM installed and so as you expand (well, as money becomes available) you could add ClassROM’s to more and more of the Archimedes so that fewer stations would have to load their applications via the network. Prices are £150 (+VAT) for the management software plus £344 for each 20M classROM unit or £445 for the 45M version. Archive prices (inc VAT) are £160, £375 and £485 respectively. 4.10 • Creator − Alpine Software have produced a program to enable you to create your own arcade game. It comes with an object designer, a screen designer, a path designer, an event manager and a run-time system. You also get a collection of sprites and sound samples to incorporate in your own games. The price is £38.95 from Alpine Software or £36 through Archive. 4.10 • Digital Storage Oscilloscope − Armadillo Systems Ltd have produced a digital storage oscilloscope using the Archimedes to do the capture, processing and display of the data. It comes in single and dual input formats priced at £323.10 and £445.50 +VAT respectively. The inputs are 1Mohm, 30 pF, 30MHz, 5V to 10mV with a resolution of 256 steps on channel 1 and 128 on channel 2. This system makes good use of the processing power of the Archimedes to give a range of ways of interpret ing and displaying the data collected. 4.10 • Fine Racer − Race your buggy around various circuits avoiding various obstacles, picking up various bonus points which can be converted into things to upgrade your car provided you come in the first three in the race itself. Oh, and watch out for Mad Max who drives like a maniac. Produced by Eterna in France and marketed in this country by Vector Services. Price £19.95 inc VAT. 4.10 • Imagine is not just another art pack − Topologika refer to their new product as a design pack because it has applications right across the curriculum. It has a twin-screen facility and built-in maths facilities and an on-line help facility. The price is £39.95 inc VAT or £37 through Archive. Separately available are packs of images for £9.95 +VAT each including Pirates, Victorians and Romans. 4.10 • Impression Business Supplement − Computer Concepts have produced a set of utilities which make Impression II into a powerful business/profes sional DTP system. The supplement includes Expression-PS (also available separately), a mail-merge utility, a sort utility for use with the merge program plus four loader modules: RTF (as used with Microsoft Word on PC and Mac), WordPerfect, PipeDream and WordStar. The price is £49 +VAT or £53 through Archive. 4.10 • MiG29 − a new flight simulator from the originators of Interdictor − SIMIS. For full details of this, see the review on page 24. The price is £40.85 inc VAT or £38 through Archive. 4.10 • New PC Emulator is (almost!) here! − A press release of 19/6/91 confidently predicted the release of the new PC Emulator on 21st June. It’s not actually available yet as I write (2/7/91) but it should be in “about three weeks”. Version 1.6 of the emulator allows you to return to your desktop and find it intact and, on machines with 2M or more, it can run concurrently with RISC-OS within the multi-tasking environment. DOS files can be accessed directly from RISC-OS and it provides “full CD-ROM support via CDFS and MSCD extensions”. It is supplied with MS-DOS 3.3 including a mouse driver and has an emulation of the Intel 8087 maths co-processor which increases floating point calculations by a factor of fourteen. The emulator runs in CGA, EGA or MDA graphics modes with partial support for VGA for software, such as Windows 3, which accesses the video hardware directly. The price is the same as the old emulator, £99 plus VAT or £96 through Archive, and there is an upgrade for existing users for £29 (+VAT presumably) and as soon as we know how you can get the upgrade, we will let you know. (I suggest you check the back of the Price List which is printed later than the magazine itself.) (See the screenshot below.) 4.10 • PrimeArt is Minerva’s new 256 colour art package aimed at primary and special needs children. Amongst other things, it allows sprites to be pasted into a picture, has tailorable menus and allows text of any available font to be used. The cost is £79.95 +VAT or £87 through Archive. 4.10 • Removable drive prices down again − This time it’s the Atomwide removable drive with the high power fans − they are now down to £555 inc VAT or £755 with an Oak podule. 4.10 • Rhapsody II is available now for £61.95 inc VAT (or £57 through Archive) and there is an upgrade through Clares for £15.50 inc VAT − just send the original disc back (not the packing) to Clares. The main extra features of Rhapsody II are: drag notes from panels onto the score, MIDI thru and MIDI beat added, multiple MIDI ports supported, MIDI program changes possible within the score, capture notes in step time directly onto stave, octave transposition, transcribe triplets, block re-tail, improved sprites for better printout, formatted scores can be exported in Draw format to a new program called ScoreDraw which will allow professional quality printouts. (ScoreDraw will be available “later this year”.) 4.10 • Swedish Impression − If you want a Swedish version of Impression 2.1, contact Information Technology Services, Sjötullsg. 3, 602 27 Norrköping, Sweden (11−127758, fax 11−126545). Most programs on the Applications Discs are also available in Swedish, as is PipeDream 3. 4.10 • Wonderland is an impressive new adventure game occupying four floppies (which can be loaded onto hard disc). It is based on Alice in Wonderland and runs in its own (non-RISC-OS) window environment. It costs £32 through Archive. 4.10 • UltraSonic Sound System − Alpine Software claim this to be the only fully RISC-OS compliant, multi-tasking sound and music system. It produces music files that are compatible with Creator, their new Arcade Games Designer − see overleaf. It comes with an application to convert samples from various formats as well as Soundtracker files into its own format. It also comes with a PD playback application to play UltraSonic files and a disc of almost 150 sampled instrument sounds. The price is £30 from Alpine Software or £28 through Archive. 4.10 Review software received... 4.10 We have received review copies of the following software and hardware: Fine Racer, Animynd Life, DrawAid, House of Numbers, UltraSonic. A 4.10 4.10 Government Health Warning − Beware of flabby Christians! 4.10 Those of you living in the U.K. get a very distorted view of Christian ity. Why? Well, it would be easy to blame the media for the caricature they present of vicars with funny sing-song voices or ladies in big flowery hats singing boring hymns. But that view is based, unfor tunately, on an element of truth. 4.10 The church in this country is flabby! It contains many people (though, thankfully, the proportion is decreasing) for whom Christianity is just a chance to dress up in fine clothes and parade around showing people how religious they are. They think that going to church makes you a Christian. Rubbish! It’s not surprising that people reject what I call “Churchianity”. 4.10 The church also, sadly, contains a number of people for whom Christian ity is a social circle with mildly altruistic aims − a bit like a religious version of the Round Table − “doing good to the poor” and all that. They think that makes them a Christian. Rubbish! That’s not true Christianity either − it’s what I call “Dogoodianity”. 4.10 Don’t get me wrong, I think Christians should get together (notice that I didn’t say “go to church”) to worship God − I really enjoy going to church on Sunday. Mind you, the church I go to isn’t your average Church of England church! I do enjoy church social activities − there are some lovely people who go to our church and I enjoy spending time with them. We do try to go around helping people − locally, nationally and internationally. But none of these things makes me a Christian. 4.10 Anyone can be negative but what is true Christianity? It’s nothing less than a life-changing experience of meeting with the Living God. Sounds radical! It is. You may not feel that your life need changing but that’s because, in this country, we lead such “comfortable” lives. 4.10 I could take you to some countries (which I cannot name because copies of this magazine go there) where to become a Christian and to say so openly would mean you would lose your job and be rejected by your own family. Also, if you tried to share your new-found joy with others, you could find yourself in prison. People are, today, being hanged for trying to share their Christian beliefs. I tell you, there are no flabby Christians in those countries! 4.10 4.10 4.10 Norwich Computer Services 96a Vauxhall Street, Norwich, NR2 2SD. 0603- 766592 (764011) 4.10 4.10 4th Dimension P.O. Box 4444, Sheffield. (0742−700661) 4.10 4mation 11 Castle Park Road, Whiddon Valley, Barnstaple, Devon, EX32 8PA. (0271−25353) (−22974) 4.10 Abacus Training 29 Okus Grove, Upper Stratton, Swindon, Wilts, SN2 6QA. 4.10 Acorn Direct Studland Road, Kingsthorpe, Northampton, NN2 6NA. 4.10 Acorn Direct 13 Dennington Road, Wellingborough, Northants, NN8 2RL. 4.10 Acorn Computers Ltd Fulbourn Road, Cherry Hinton, Cambridge, CB1 4JN. (0223−245200) (−210685) 4.10 Ace Computing (p16) 27 Victoria Road, Cambridge, CB4 3BW. (0223−322559) (−69180) 4.10 Aleph One Ltd The Old Courthouse, Bottisham, Cambridge, CB5 9BA. (0223−811679) (−812713) 4.10 Alpine Software P.O.Box 25, Portadown, Craigavon, BT63 5UT. (0762−342510) 4.10 Armadillo Systems Ltd 17 Glaston Road, Uppingham, Leicester, LE15 9PX. (0572−82−2499) 4.10 Arnor Ltd 611 Lincoln Road, Peterborough, PE1 3HA. (0733−68909) (−67299) 4.10 Atomwide Ltd (p 6) 23 The Greenway, Orpington, Kent, BR5 2AY. (0689−838852) (−896088) 4.10 Beebug Ltd 117 Hatfield Road, St Albans, Herts, AL1 4JS. (0727−40303) (−60263) 4.10 Clares Micro Supplies 98 Mid dlewich Road, Rudheath, Northwich, Cheshire, CW9 7DA. (0606−48511) (−48512) 4.10 Colton Software (p15) 149−151 St Neots Road, Hardwick, Cambridge, CB3 7QJ. (0954−211472) (−211607) 4.10 Computer Concepts (p30/31) Gaddesden Place, Hemel Hempstead, Herts, HP2 6EX. (0442−63933) (−231632) 4.10 Data Store 6 Chatterton Road, Bromley, Kent. (081−460−8991) (−313−0400) 4.10 DT Software 13 Northumberland Road, Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, CV32 6HE. 4.10 DT Software FREEPOST, Cambridge CB3 7BR. (0223−841099) 4.10 Electronic Font Foundry Bridge House, 18 Brockenhurst Road, Ascot, SL5 9DL. (0344−28698) 4.10 Eterna 4 rue de Massacan, 34740 Z.I. Vendargues, France. (010−33 +67 70 53 97) 4.10 Ian Copestake Software 10 Frost Drive, Wirral, L61 4XL. (051−632−1234)(−3434) 4.10 IFEL (p23) 36 Upland Drive, Plymouth, Devon, PL6 6BD. (0752−847286) 4.10 Intelligent Interfaces 43B Wood Street, Stratford-on-Avon, CV37 6JQ. (0789−415875) (−450926) 4.10 Lingenuity (Lindis) (p12) P.O.Box 10, Halesworth, Suffolk, IP19 0DX. (0986−85−476) (−460) 4.10 Longman-Logotron Dales Brewery, Gwydir Street, Cambridge, CB1 2LJ. (0223−323656) (−460208) 4.10 Minerva Systems Minerva House, Baring Crescent, Exeter, EX1 1TL. (0392−437756) (−421762) 4.10 MJD Software 13 Burnham Way, London, W13 9YE. (081−567−4284) 4.10 Oak Solutions (p11) Cross Park House, Low Green, Rawdon, Leeds, LS19 6HA. (0532−502615) (−506868) 4.10 P.R.E.S. 6 Ava House, Chobham, Surrey. (0276−72046) 4.10 RESOURCE Exeter Road, Doncaster, DN2 4PY. (0302−340331) 4.10 Safesell Exhibitions (p5) Market House, Cross Road, Tadworth, Surrey KT20 5SR. 4.10 Sherston Software Swan Barton, Sherston, Malmesbury, Wilts. SN16 0LH. (0666−840433) (−840048) 4.10 Silicon Vision Ltd Signal House, Lyon Road, Harrow, Middlesex, HA1 2AG. (081−422−2274) (−427−5169) 4.10 Simtron Ltd 4 Clarence Drive, East Grinstead, W. Sussex, RH19 4RZ. (0342−328188) 4.10 Soft Rock Software 124 Marissal Road, Henbury, Bristol, BS10 7NP. (0272−503639 evenings) 4.10 The Serial Port Burcott Manor, Wells, Somerset, BA5 1NH. (0243−531194) (−531196) 4.10 Topologika P.O. Box 39, Stilton, Peterborough, PE7 3RL. (0733−244682) 4.10 Vector Services Ltd 13 Denning ton Road, Wellingborough, Northants, NN8 2RL. 4.10 VisionSix Ltd (p10) 13 Paddock Wood, Prudhoe, Northumberland, NE42 5BJ. (0661−33017) (−36163) 4.10 XOB Balkeerie, Eassie by Forfar, Angus, DD8 1SR. (0307−84364) 4.10 4.10 Safesell 4.10 NEW 4.10 4.10 Hints and Tips 4.10 • *Count command − In Archive 4.6 p8 the hint about *Count, is only partly right. The *Count command only counts data. This means that directories indeed don’t contribute, but also that only the amount of data in a file is counted. However, all files must be an integer multiple of the block-size (1k for D and E format), and for short files this makes a huge difference. My 46Mb hard disc has about 8Mb difference between space used from *Free and from *Count for these reasons! 4.10 One implication of this is that when you archive a large number of small files with !Spark you can save much more disc space than you might expect. One thing I would suggest for hard disc users is to copy the directory tree using *Copy :4.$ :0 T R, and then archive it, which will compress it down to almost nothing. Think of all the time you spend setting up the directory structure; this may be more important than losing files, most of which you will (should?), after all, have on floppies. As an added bonus this also gives you the location of all applications, as these are just directories. If (perish the thought) you have a disc crash, you can just drag the tree out of the archive and onto a new hard disc. Stephen Burke, Liverpool. 4.10 • DataLoad problems? − The PRM says that if a DataLoad message isn’t acknowledged, the sending task should delete <Wimp$Scrap> and give an error. However, I think this is wrong. You aren’t guaranteed that the scrap file used is, in fact, <Wimp$Scrap>. One case where this must happen is with an application which can both load and save files of the same type at the same time; it must not use <Wimp$Scrap> for both, or it might get very confused! However, there might be other reasons. I therefore think you should remember the name of the file you saved, and delete that − you get told that it wasn’t a secure file, so this should be safe. Stephen Burke, Liverpool. 4.10 • Hard Drive problems − BEWARE!!! If you have a fairly old computer − a 310 or a 440 or even a vintage 410/1 or if you are working in a dusty environment and you are putting in a new hard drive, check/replace the fan filter. Why? Well, drive suppliers tell us that on more than one occasion they have had a computer where the fan filter was blocked up with dust, the customer has installed a new drive and not changed the filter and, as a result of the lack of airflow, the drive has suffered a fatal head crash. So, you have been warned. (Fan filters should be available “from your local Acorn dealer” or they can be bought from N.C.S. as part of an “Annual Service Kit” − including a new pair of batteries − priced £3.) 4.10 • How long is a line? − While editing an old program which I was converting from the BBC Master to run on the Archimedes, I came across some features of Basic line lengths which may be of interest. The program was originally written for the BBC-B with the longest possible lines to save space. 4.10 On Page 16 of the ‘Basic User Guide’ issue 1 dated 1988, it says ‘A line of Basic can contain up to 238 characters...’ but on page 386 it says that ‘As in a Basic program, the length of a line is limited (by the Basic Editor) to 251 characters..’. This implies that the system has two different ideas of what the maximum line length should be, instead of one. Unfortunately, the one it uses seems to depend on what you are doing. 4.10 My module ARMBasicEdit (version 1 21 August 87) allows the insertion of many more than 238 characters in a line. I can get up to 369 before there is a warning bell, but then neither <Escape> nor <Return> nor SAVE work until there are only the 251 characters left. Programs containing lines of length between 239 and 251 apparently run without problems. However, if you try editing the lines with Basic loaded, just using the Copy key, you find that there is a warning bell after 239 characters, (excluding the line number), not after 251. 4.10 Programs with lines longer than 239 characters can be converted to ASCII using *SPOOL. However, when you attempt to read them back into a Basic program using *EXEC, the lines are truncated to 239, so that the program no longer runs. There is a warning bell but the *EXEC process does not stop, so not allowing me to find which lines are at fault. I find this very frustrating. The file Btest, on the monthly disc, is an example of such a program. The file ‘CHECK240’ is a small program which reads a file made using *SPOOL which cannot be successfully read back using *EXEC. It lists the line numbers which are too long, allowing me to edit them with the Basic Editor. 4.10 CHAIN“Btest” to see that it runs. Then try 4.10 *SPOOL TEMP 4.10 LIST 4.10 *SPOOL 4.10 *EXEC TEMP 4.10 CHAIN “CHECK240” 4.10 and reply “TEMP” at the prompt. Kate Crennell, Didcot. 4.10 • Printer drivers − Further to recent tips about altering the PrData file within the printer driver, you can also alter the title of your preferred driver and make it the default driver on loading. For example, the amendments to !PrinterDM in Archive 4.8 could be made to read “Star LC24-10” by altering the line before the line “printer number:2”. The default loading is achieved by amending the line “printer:01” to “printer:02”. This line is found towards the end of the data file immediately before the line “location:1”. Note that the printer number must be padded out with a zero (0). Pressing <select> after loading the driver will confirm if your amendments have been correctly made. Ted Lacey, Southampton. 4.10 • Printing A5 on an A4 printer − If you ask the manufacturers, they say it is not possible to put A5 paper through either the Qume (300 d.p.i.) or the Canon (600 d.p.i.) Laser Directs − or the LBP4’s for that matter − but it is possible. All you need is a pile of A5 sheets of scrap paper sellotaped up into a solid block about ½“ thick (or ¾” thick for the Canons). You put them at the back of the A4 paper tray and put the A5 paper, sideways, of course, at the front. The paper usually goes through OK but does occasionally stick. All you have to be careful of, presum ably, is that you don’t print on the lower half of the (A4) paper that is not actually there. Having said that, I have been using A5 paper on Qume’s, Canons and Mac Laserwriters for years and have occasionally left the “A5” tray in when printing A4 without any obvious damage to the printers. 4.10 We can now get hold of spare paper trays for Qume (£66) and Canon LBP4 (£57) and Canon LBP8 (£54) 4.10 (A possible alternative to the paper is a block of wood the same size and thickness but I haven’t actually tried it.) 4.10 • Psychedelic sound-to-light − Whilst playing a Tracker module, it is possible to obtain some interesting effects on your monitor by typing the following Basic command: 4.10 SYS “OS_UpdateMEMC”,768,1792 4.10 The screen can be returned to normal with either a MODE command or with: 4.10 SYS “OS_UpdateMEMC”,1536,1792 4.10 Rob Swain, Kent 4.10 • Render Bender on SCSI hard disc drives revisited − In Archive 3.11 p6, Neil Berry explains how to use Render Bender on SCSI hard disc drives but leaves us with the problem of how to use *KILLADFS. This can be achieved by changing all references made to SWI ADFS_Drives (&40242) to SWI SCSI_Drives (&403C6). i.e. 4.10 In the ‘Render’ Basic listing: change the SWI &40242 to &403C6 in line 15810 4.10 In ‘Aniroute’ Basic listing: change the SWI &40242 to &403C6 in line 6670 4.10 Atle Mjelde Bårdholt, Norway 4.10 • Running one application inside another − The comment in Archive 4.9 page 6 seems to need some amplification. As explained on page 11 of the May/June 1991 issue of “The Archimedean” from Computer Concepts, if you want to run one application from inside the !Run file of another, you should first enter the command 4.10 *Desktop Run <sibling task name> 4.10 and then repeat the *Wimpslot command from earlier in the !Run file to ensure that there is enough memory available for the main application before you run it. 4.10 Thus, for example, to make Impression automatically load a printer driver whenever it is run you should edit the !Impress.!Run file by inserting two extra lines immediately before the last so that the last three lines read: 4.10 Desktop Run [...path...].!PrinterXX 4.10 Wimpslot −min xxxK −max xxxK 4.10 Run “<Impression$Dir>.!RunImage” %*0 4.10 The xxxK in the Wimpslot command should be exactly the same as used earlier in the !Run file − the precise amount of memory needed will vary from one version of Impression to another. Hugh Eagle, Horsham. 4.10 • Sound improvements − A much improved sound, which is also more controllable, can be obtained using the standard colour monitor supplied with the Archimedes. A 3.5mm jack (Archimedes) to phono (monitor) cable is required, and the speaker on the Archimedes should be turned off using *SPEAKER OFF. Sean Kelly, London 4.10 • Sound voice changes − Among the (many) things that annoy me are those professional programmers who alter your Sound Voice for their games which otherwise claim to be “RISC-OS Compatible”. They return you to the desktop with their Sound Modules set up as ChannelVoice 1. Not everyone likes the WaveSynth-Beep as default voice, and as for some of the sound modules or digitised Voice Modules which are then sounded when an error occurs, YUK! 4.10 It is quite a simple matter to find out what ChannelVoice the user has set up and the program could very easily, before exiting to the desktop, restore it using the following code which is available for all program mers to use, professional or amateur (please!). 4.10 REM Find the User’s ChannelVoice 1 4.10 SYS “Sound_AttachVoice”,1,0 to ,user_voice% 4.10 4.10 REM Because ChannelVoice 1 now equal to 0, reset 4.10 SYS “Sound_AttachVoice”,1,user_voice% 4.10 REM Rest of program, Wimp Interface, whatever 4.10 *ChannelVoice 1 Totally Fantastic Voice 4.10 4.10 REM Program at end, restore user voice 4.10 SYS“Sound_AttachVoice”,1,user_voice% 4.10 David Shepherdson 4.10 • Toolkit Plus update − Clares’ Toolkit Plus usually produces a ‘Bad disc address’ error when you try to edit E format floppy discs. This can be rectified by performing the following: 4.10 1 RMLoad the Toolkit Plus module. 4.10 2 Type: *Modules <return> and take note of the ‘position’ address of the Toolkit Plus module. 4.10 3 Use *WFIND &EF060240 <return> and ignore the first occurrence (i.e. press <ctrl-tab> to go on to the next occurrence). 4.10 4 Locate the instruction seventeen lines down which reads BCC xxxxx. 4.10 5 Select ‘word mode’ and zero this instruction. 4.10 You should now be able to edit E format discs. 4.10 S Edwards, Wordsley 4.10 • Toolkit Plus with SCSI − Clares’ Toolkit Plus provides a disc sector editor, which refused to work on my SCSI hard disc. A modified Toolkit Plus may be produced by using !Edit on the Toolkit Plus module to replace all occurrences of ‘ADFS’ with ‘SCSI’ before saving the module with a new name e.g. SCSITools. 4.10 A drawback is that the modified version will not cope with ADFS floppies. Changing the module name (e.g. from ‘Toolkit+’ to ‘SCSITools’) using !Edit allows the modified and original modules to be present at the same time, and changing the disc edit command names allows both ADFS and SCSI discs to be edited − for instance, !Edit could be used to replace ‘AEDIT’ in Toolkit+ with ‘WEDIT’ in SCSITools. 4.10 Sean Kelly, London 4.10 Impression Hints and Tips 4.10 • Abbreviations − I use abbreviations quite a lot such as “imp” for Impression and just “r” for Archimedes but I often want to say, for example “ ...using DrawPlus (Careware 13)...” and although “ca” and “Ca” are both set up to expand to “Careware”, using “(ca” doesn’t work. There is no easy way round it as far as I know − you just have to put “(ca” into the abbreviations dictionary to expand to “(Careware”. 4.10 • Bullets − We’ve mentioned that <ctrl-shift-H> produces a bullet but since <backspace> (immediately below <F12> and above <\>) produces the same ASCII code as <ctrl-H>, you will find that <shift-backspace> produces a bullet. Touch typists may well find it somewhat more natural than <ctrl-shift-H>. 4.10 • Creating tables − The release notes issued with Impression II describe the new features of version 2.12 but they do less than justice to one of those features, namely the capacity to create tables. It is possible to vary the width of individual columns and individual rows in a table as well as the thickness of the vertical and horizontal lines which form the table. 4.10 In addition, the many editing facilities of Impression can be used to modify text which has been entered into the table so that the style and size of the characters in any “cell” of the table can be varied as desired. 4.10 Moreover, in the manner usual with Impression II, another frame can be superimposed on any selected part of the table with the effect that lines of the table can be covered and will “disappear” permitting text of any size and nature to be introduced and adjusted to appear to be a part of the structure of the table. 4.10 In addition to text, any of the superimposed frames can be made graphics frames permitting illustrations to be introduced. You can use left hand tabulation in the some columns, right hand tabulation in others and decimal point tabulation in others. 4.10 Practical matters: First construct the empty table. Then determine which cells will be visible in the completed table and enter text into those cells, Finally, superimpose other frames as required. Proceeding in this order prevents interference with tabulation. 4.10 The usual procedure will be to construct a table of this kind within a frame of its own so that it can be moved as a whole to any desired position within the document of which it will form a part. Therefore, on completion of the table, the various frames of which it is composed should be Grouped so that the table occupies a single frame. George Foot, Oxted. A 4.10 4.10 4.10 4.10 Oak 4.10 From 4.9 page 12 4.10 4.10 Lindis International 4.10 From 4.8 page 16 4.10 4.10 Computer Concepts 4.10 New artwork 4.10 Coming direct to you, hopefully! 4.10 If not, use old one. 4.10 4.10 Computer Concepts 4.10 New artwork 4.10 Coming direct to you, hopefully! 4.10 If not, use old one. 4.10 4.10 Graphics Galore on the Cheap! 4.10 Tord Eriksson 4.10 Reading with amazement about the latest version of Ventura Publisher Mac that costs a cool £695 (exclusive VAT!) and so-called ‘budget’ DTP programs for IBMs weighing in at £70 to £160, I wonder if we Archimedes users really know how fortunate we are when it comes to good, cheap software. 4.10 The “budget” DTP programs for IBMs can’t even word-process − you have to use a separate editor, just as you have to do if you do some DTP with !Draw.... 4.10 Of course, the latest version of Ventura Publisher Mac can print fonts in 23½ size instead of just 23 or 24 point size − a revolution no doubt but one that almost all DTP and word-processors for our Archimedes machines manage easily! 4.10 Archimedes − no master of colours! 4.10 There is a difference between modern IBMs and Mac II’s that puts all Acorn computers at a disadvantage, even if it was once hailed as an advance over said computers: Colours! 4.10 In terms of colour, both Mac II computers and IBMs with VGA are better than Archimedes and the sky is the limit as there are hundreds of graphics cards that can be bought that improve things further − 24-bit colours are available. 4.10 RISC-OS has an upper limit of 8 bits per pixel, 256 colours − 24 bits per pixel gives 16,777,216 different colours, quite a lot more!. 4.10 For the Archimedes range, the limitations are built-in, through RISC-OS and the fixed hardware. (There are some improvements possible with hardware add-ons, but nothing major). 4.10 Serious DTP is black & white! 4.10 Fortunately, colour printers are very rare in everyday printing, mainly due to the fact that such printers are very costly and/or requires skilled staff to attend to them. 4.10 So, for practical purposes, DTP will continue to be a mainly black & white affair, maybe with some colour thrown in for good measure on covers etc. 4.10 The woes of illustrating.... 4.10 Being a former technical illustrator, I am painfully aware of the amount of work needed to set text in a circular fashion as on a coin or an official seal or make the logo on a fluttering flag look like the real thing. Hours and hours of work, or in the case of the flag, take a photo of the real thing and trace that with tracing paper.... 4.10 If the logo is new, you can’t print it first on a flag, so you try to make do with crinkling a piece of paper upon which you put your text or logo and take a photo of that.... 4.10 All this is now of the past, as long as your logo or text can be transformed into a !Draw file. 4.10 First − !FontFX 4.10 Let us try an example: There used to be an oil company around this part of the world called Caltex. Let us say we are going to do a drawing with a flag fluttering with that name on it. 4.10 First we have the text, set in Pembroke: 4.10 To make it more interesting let’s add a shadow, with the shadow in the north-east, and make the text itself a black outline filled with a light grey and behind it, the dark grey shadow: 4.10 4.10 4.10 4.10 Both these operations are very easy to do with !FontFX as you just click on the buttons needed, no previous know-how needed! 4.10 To make this flutter we have to use a couple of other utilities: !DrawPlus (or !Draw) and DrawBender. 4.10 Warped universe 4.10 A normal picture is plotted in our brain according to the angle we watch the picture from: If we fly above a square field the corners are right angle corners (a so-called bird’s-eye view) and if we stand just outside the field the angles get very odd indeed − their sum is still 360, though! 4.10 If a square is wrapped around a cylinder things get much more compli cated, especially when seen at an angle − an illustrator’s nightmare! Not even all CAD programs seems to be able to solve it correctly.... 4.10 Secondly − make a mould! 4.10 DrawBender manipulates !Draw files by plotting them inside each other: Any text that is going to be manipulated has to be in !Draw format. The coordinate system “inside” a square is still square but inside a circle it takes on the characteristics of a text printed on a balloon like this: 4.10 4.10 4.10 4.10 4.10 The first (the circle) is called the mould and the second (the square inside a frame) is called the object. 4.10 Due to the way DrawBender works, a real circle couldn’t be used − it had to be substituted it with a 32-sided polygon and it had to be flipped over because paths have to be clockwise to work as moulds in DrawBender whereas !Draw and !DrawPlus draw counter-clockwise − it’s all very well explained in the DrawBender manual! 4.10 Wonderful results! 4.10 Taking the text, we put it on rectangular background, to make the outline of the flag as the outline of the mould doesn’t show up on the finished result: 4.10 This is now our object! A “flapping flag” is our mould: 4.10 Conclusion 4.10 As the end result shows the effect is quite stunning. This amount of manipulation is available to IBM users of course − I could recommend Express Publisher (£159.95) as the “low-cost” alternative! 4.10 For Archimedes users the cost is just £21, including two manuals and lots of sample files (available from Ian Copestake Software). A 4.10 4.10 Caltex 4.10 4.10 + 4.10 4.10 = 4.10 4.10 Colton Software 4.10 From 4.9 page 18 4.10 4.10 Ace Computing 4.10 From 4.8 page 4 4.10 4.10 Comment Column 4.10 • Acorn’s “look and feel” − Software for a computer like the Archimedes has to be developed in accordance with a certain set of rules so that the same operations (like saving a file or searching a string) can be performed in the same way in every program; however, to become accep table to all those different programmers, the guidelines have to be selected very carefully and this, in my opinion, Acorn has failed to do! 4.10 When I bought my new Archimedes at the end of 1990, it came equipped with Impression, so that I got acquainted simultaneously with the different ways of handling text which are used in Edit and in Impression. 4.10 As Impression was quite new, whereas the version of Edit on my appli cation disc was already one year old, I took it for granted that the much more efficient methods used in Impression constituted the new accepted style which would also appear in new versions of Edit. 4.10 For those not acquainted with Impression (or Ovation): What I am writing about is, most of all, the way in which selected areas are used as a kind of giant caret − effects like a new font appear either from the current cursor position onwards or, if a selection was made, in the selected region; new text is inserted either at the cursor position or in the place of the selected text, which vanishes to the clipboard; if you wish to select a large text area, you can position the caret at one end, then use the scroll bar to find the other end, where you click adjust − the caret has stayed where it was. 4.10 Now I have read with dismay that, on the contrary, Acorn in their new guidelines for programmers have still upheld the style used in Edit as compulsory − and that’s a shame! 4.10 What I will do is write a letter to Acorn urging them to reconsider and I very much hope that all those who agree with me that Impression (and to a lesser extent also Ovation) employs methods far superior to those found in Edit, will do the same. (In the words of the old Hudson Bay Company: If you like it, tell the Queen; if you don’t, tell us!) 4.10 Jochen Konietzko, Koeln, Germany 4.10 • Arcscan III − I was pleased to see a review of ArcScan III in Archive 4.8; and particularly pleased that what your reviewer called his “first niggle” turned out to be his only adverse comment about the package. 4.10 The feature which niggled your reviewer also niggled me for the same reasons. In response to your comments, version 6.1 (released in May) has a new “Save finds” option which allows you to drag a text icon to a printer driver icon for printout of your finds under full control of the Acorn drivers, with all the advantages which this confers. Alterna tively, you can drag the icon to a directory viewer to save your finds for subsequent use or for editing as required. 4.10 Since the last version of ArcScan which you reviewed (0.5) was released in Nov/Dec last year, a number of other enhancements have also been made to the package in response to feedback from its wide user base, including an extended wildcard option. Additionally, there is now an ArcScan Library Disc containing data from Acorn User and Micro User from 1987 (the year of the Archimedes) to the present. This will be updated on a regular basis. 4.10 By the way, your reviewer did not mention the price of ArcScan. It costs £18 from Norwich Computer Services. Lee Calcraft, Beebug Ltd. 4.10 If you want to upgrade to version 6.1, send your master disc with a covering letter either to Lee or to the Magazine Department who will, I gather, be pleased to upgrade it for you free of charge. In case you were wondering, that’s not a typographical error, Lee has developed Arcscan III from version 0.5 to version 6.1 in just six months. 4.10 • ArcScan III again − I enjoyed Eric Ayers’ article on ArcScan III (Archive 4.8 p 21) because I too have been frustrated by some of its features, and I should like to share my experiences with your readers. I agree with Eric that despite the poor operation of the PRINT command, it is a very useful program. Early versions of ArcScan III had a problem with the printer driver when used with some printers, e.g my Taxan Kaga KP810. Although ArcScan II printed, ArcScan III claimed the printer was not online! The latest version, (number 0.52 dated 20 Feb 1991) has cured this problem for me. 4.10 Enhancements I should like to see are: 4.10 1. Better handling of punctuation, preferably ignoring it all. My experiments show that the current version of ArcScan III ignores both “.” and “,” as word separators but not “;” or “ ‘ ”. 4.10 2. Selective printing of the results of a search in a multi-tasking manner, (as requested by Eric), and easier options to leave the selected entries in a file. (See above!) 4.10 3. An option to set the printer line length. This is currently set to 40, the number of characters visible on the screen. This wastes half the paper on most printers which can easily take 80. 4.10 4. Allowing the search to continue over multiple databases, e.g. to search both RISC User and the Acorn manuals for all occurrences of a string such as ‘FormEd’. This would be even more useful now that some Acorn and Micro User bibliographies are available. (See Risc User May 1991 for details of entries since 1987.) 4.10 5. Allow repeated searches, with new search strings which operate only on the previously selected entries. This might be done by making new temporary databases in files with an option to delete or keep the files on exit of the program. This would make it easier to make our own special interest databases. 4.10 6. Restriction of the search to particular article types, this was a ‘MagScan’ feature lost in the translation to ArcScan. I don’t want my search slowed down by looking through hundreds of ‘Games’ when I only want ‘Programming Articles’. Kate Crennell, Didcot. 4.10 • Assembler speed confusion − In answer to the question in the Archive 4.6 p5 about why removing an instruction from an assembler program can slow it down, basically it’s to do with the way memory access is optimised by the ARM and MEMC. The upshot is that you can access four sequential words in memory in five cycles but only if they start on a quad-word boundary (i.e. the address is divisible by 16); otherwise it takes 6 cycles. This can obviously make a big difference in a loop. This also applies to LDM and STM, so the most efficient transfers involve a multiple of four registers, with the base address aligned to a quadword boundary. The magic number of four words was chosen because MEMC holds up DMA requests (e.g. video update) during these fast sequential cycles, and you can’t do that for too long. DMA access itself always uses quadword chunks. The ARM doesn’t know anything about the four word limit and normally thinks it’s doing sequential access all the time; it’s MEMC which forces a non-sequential access whenever bits 2 and 3 of the address are zero. Stephen Burke, Liverpool. 4.10 • Clares − I use Pipedream regularly in my office but, although I find it very efficient, it hasn’t got the prettiest of screen displays and is not particularly easy to use for other people in the office who complain about having to use <adjust> to select a box and not being able to only use the cursor keys to move around the sheet so with this in mind I approached Clares about a demonstration copy of Schema. 4.10 Clares sent me a full working copy on one month’s evaluation and for this I would like to thank them as this is the only real way to test software. 4.10 I found the program very easy to use and there was a lot Colton Software could look at to improve Pipedream especially the highlighting of the current cell. 4.10 The only reason I couldn’t use it was because each sheet took up too much memory and as I need up to 13 sheets in memory at once even 4meg wasn’t enough. I recommend that anyone wanting to purchase a spreadsheet give Schema a look. 4.10 • IDE drives from Ian Copestake − Having had my A3000 for a little over a year now and getting well “into” public domain software and starting to get the hang of RISC-OS and the Wimp, I decided that I would like to have a hard disk, even if it was only to clear a little room and get rid of the piles of floppies that had built up! I took my time and looked at the adverts, compared prices and decided to wait! Then, Ian Copestake advertised a series of hard drives for the A3000 which, although external, could plug in internally at no extra cost! (Most important) However, I wanted to be able to upgrade easily with anything bought for my A3000. The 20 Mbyte internal was OK, but 20 Mbytes is only 25 “E” format floppy disks, so I looked at a larger drive. Archive were offering 45Mbyte removables for about the same price as Ian was selling 80 Mbyte drives, PLUS if I ever did need further storage, I could simply plug in a second drive for about £400 giving me a massive 160 Mbytes of FAST storage. (MR45’s run at 590 kbytes/second which could hardly be called slow and extra 42M cartridges are only £75 each so we are not really comparing like with like. Ed) So, I counted up the pennies and rang up. Ian was kindness itself and spent quite a bit of time explain ing the ins and outs of the idea of hard disks and the ideA interface itself and promised to despatch one as soon as they came off the production line. 4.10 Next thing I knew, Risc User did a very negative review of the drive. The end of the month came and so did my drive, VERY well packed. Although I am not a total beginner at fitting expansion boards, I would have preferred a little clearer information on just which board I had. But a few minutes more spent reading the leaflet cleared up which bit went where and which way up, and I had my new drive installed. 4.10 Now came the big test − put the cover back on and switch on. Having done so, I was very pleased to find an IDE 4 icon on the icon bar, though to the right of the floppy icon, and clicking on this displayed the hard disk directory with a few files shown − formatter and such like which had to be transferred to floppy as the drive was supplied formatted. 4.10 Clicking on the FREE entry on the menu gave me what works out at just under 81.5 Mbytes available. I then spent several hours and had great fun setting up my drive as I wanted it with !System, !Fonts and a !Boot application in the root directory and everything else in directories such as Utilities, Applications and so on. I made a back up at 20 Mbytes and carried on, wiping the disks as I went. (MISTAKE!) I carried on and, by the time the next day dawned, I had over 30 Mbytes of software on, loads of blank disks ready for the next back up and then, “Broken Directory”. What a blow! I was, however, able to get most of the programs off, though I did lose about half a dozen in the end. I salvaged what I could and ran the formatter. I then put the 20 Mbyte backup back on and catalogued the disk and, again, “Broken Directory”. I even lost access to the floppy drive at one point. 4.10 I rang Ian Copestake who asked me to ring the service department which I did. It turns out they are “just over the hill” from me, so they arranged to pop over that evening and sort me out. They duly came and got me sorted out in short order. Just what was wrong I am unsure, I don’t know if the interface board was at fault or if I hadn’t worked it into the internal expansion socket correctly or not, but it works perfectly now. Apparently Acorn have not gold-plated the contacts in the A3000 internal expansion and sometimes it does not make full contact. 4.10 The gentleman from Baildon Electronics even gave me a copy of a speed test routine. This gives a 21ms access time with 696 kbytes transferred per second. This may be a little slow compared with the A410 or whatever, but the A3000 ideA interface is an 8bit as against a 16bit interface as on the bigger machines. Mind you, compared with floppy, it is fantastic! 4.10 Anyway, since that evening, just over a month ago, I now have a hard disk with some 47 Mbytes of software on and still quite a bit of space available. Yes, I take regular backups onto 50 odd floppies! In use, I find it a little noisy, but you can configure it to switch itself off after a time using *IDEPOWERSAVE which helps mute the noise a little, also I have put it on a cork floor tile, which again helps muffle the noise. 4.10 Other commands available are *IDEPROTECT which prevents any writing to the disk, ideal when you first examine a floppy from a new source as any virus cannot access the hard disk! David Shepherdson, Ilkley. 4.10 • PC Emulator − I read with great interest the article on setting up the PC Emulator written by Richard Wheeler in Archive 4.8 p56. With regard to the speed of the emulation, on an A540 ‘subjectively’ the speed is much improved. In fact, I don’t find it much slower than the 386SX PC’s that I use at work. 4.10 The emulation is very good and I find that most programs will run without problems. I have a Canon LBP-4 Laser Printer which I use with a Laser Direct card, a superb combination. The Canon printer comes with a program called LaserTwin which enables the Canon to emulate a HP LaserJet printer. I installed LaserTwin to run under the PC Emulator on the A540, it worked first time and I enclose a copy of the test printout (which looked very impressive Ed). Quite an achievement − an Archimedes pretending to be a PC, running a program which makes a Canon Laser Printer think it is an HP LaserJet! 4.10 I should point out though that this runs very slowly − particularly compared with the Laser Direct. However, Laserjets do run rather slowly anyway. 4.10 Incidentally, what has happened to the new PC Emulator from Acorn that you mentioned in Archive last July? It was meant to run in a window on RISC-OS, support EGA/VGA graphics and offer a worthwhile increase in speed. Indeed, I even heard that beta test versions were being tested. Why go to the trouble and expense of developing this new version of the Emulator, if it is never going to be released. Michael Lowe, Loughton. (See the Products Available. Ed.) 4.10 • Schema − (Re: Archive 4.9, p 14) With the greatest of respect to Clares, that company really has very little clue as to how spreadsheets are used to do a real job of work in the real world. 4.10 The whole point and joy of a spreadsheet is the ability to arrange and re-arrange information, to continually update and modify, to present and re-present sets and subsets of that information. In fact, to continually tune the content and presentation of information. 4.10 It is positively insulting to suggest that a user “... sets up a badly designed spreadsheet...” and that “... inserting and deleting rows and columns ... is only needed if you make a mistake in the design of your sheet”. Balderdash, Clares! Who are you to decide if users are “good” or “bad” designers of spreadsheets. Why can’t we change our minds if we wish? 4.10 The important point you overlook is that we, the customers, are users of spreadsheets. If a particular spreadsheet has an insert or delete feature, or any other feature, it is there to be used and used repeat edly. 4.10 Can we, the users, have our (so called) upgrade i.e. de-bugged first useable version, soon please? Michael Green, Sidmouth. 4.10 • Spreadsheet comparisons − A feather in your caps for being the first Archimedes magazine to realise that no spreadsheet review is complete without a comparison of speeds and sizes of operation of the competing packages. Well done! 4.10 The table given in the June issue compared loading, saving and recalcu lation for Logistix, PipeDream 3 and Schema. Readers may be surprised to find that Logistix came out best for speed and worst for file size. Much of this difference is due to Logistix not being designed for the multi- tasking desktop world. To illustrate this I have added a column to the table for PipeDream 2. Using David Scott’s figures for the other three, here is the expanded table: 4.10 Logistix PD 2 PD 3 Schema 4.10 Load time 4s 10s 20s 70s 4.10 Save time 4s 5s 9s 10s 4.10 Recalc time 4s 2s 13s 90s 4.10 File size 130k 44k 44k 90k 4.10 Memory c.700k c.500k 800k 832k 4.10 Several interesting observations can be made about these figures. PipeDream 2 is twice as fast as PipeDream 3 at loading and saving and yet they are using the same code to perform these operations. The difference in speed is due to the overheads involved in PipeDream 3 being a desktop application. We believe Logistix is faster at loading but has a larger file size because it saves on disc a dump of its memory contents. It can save and load very quickly by using the equivalent of *SAVE commands, but at the expensive of large indecipherable disc files. However, a more sophisticated approach has to be taken in the desktop world because memory management is far more complex. Both PipeDream and Schema have to process the data on saving and loading and both save ASCII files which can be processed readily by other applications. 4.10 The degradation in recalculation speed from PipeDream 2 to PipeDream 3 looks surprising. About half is due to running PipeDream 3 in the desktop environment. The other half is due to PipeDream 3’s background recalculation which enables users to carry on using the computer whilst it is working away. PipeDream 3 is alone of the four in providing this facility. 4.10 PipeDream 3 has very sophisticated memory management and is able to give back to RISC-OS memory it no longer uses. Mostly this happens automati cally but at any time can be forced by use of the “Tidy Up” command. In the example given above I find that Tidy Up reduces PipeDream 3’s memory to only 736k. 4.10 Robert Macmillan, Colton Software. A 4.10 4.10 Help!!!! 4.10 • Archimedes artwork − I want to start my own business using Impression/ Poster to provide an artwork service for posters, leaflets etc. I am not getting into typesetting neither am I doing this just for pocket money. Any help / suggestions would be much appreciated, including likely prices charged for such work. B Edwards, 31 New Horse Road, Cheslyn Hay, Walsall, W Midlands WS6 7BH or phone 0922−418923 any time except 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tues to Sat. 4.10 • Colour separations − I have heard that there are colour separation programs to enable, for example, the Deskjet 500 to print a cyan, yellow, magenta and black version of a !Draw or sprite file, overprint ing to get a whole coloured picture. Does anyone know of such an application? John Oversby, Middlesborough. 4.10 • Fortran friends wanted − I am looking for fellow Fortran programmers with a view to swapping utilities, libraries and tips on using Fortran77 on the Archimedes. Contact KMC@UK.AC. RL.DE or snail mail @ K.M.Crennell, Greytops, The Lane, Chilton, Didcot, OX11 0SE. 4.10 • High resolution greyscale monitors − We have been trying (without a lot of success) to find a good greyscale monitor for use with the Archimedes − especially with DTP in mind. One reader is using a Viking II 20“ in mode 23 on the A410 and is quite pleased but has anyone found anything else that works? If so, can you give us some details of price and supplier? Ed. 4.10 • Star LC-200 colour printer − I use a Star LC-200 with my A320-SCSI but very often when I print a page with !PrinterDM or !PrinterLC, I get a mysterious “:A” on the right hand side of the page. Can anybody help ? A.M.Bårdholt, Storgt 89, N-3190 Horten, Norway. 4.10 Help offered 4.10 • Laser printing − If you want Impression documents laser printing, Graham Whitehead will do it for a small fee. Contact him at 44 Elm Terrace, Westfield, Radstock, Bath BA3 3XS or phone him on 0761−431800 after 6 p.m. A 4.10 4.10 Credit where it’s due 4.10 • Computer Concepts − I had bought a copy of Impression Junior (1.05) and found a fault in the software where if I tried to get rid of a blank line in a frame on page 2, the program crashed completely! I wrote to CC and found that I was the only person to have written at the time about this. I was informed that the problem would be corrected in due course and an upgrade would be available at a cost of about £15. 4.10 In the latest issue of Archimedian a free upgrade to 1.11 was offered. I sent off my Junior disk and, by return of post, not only got a corrected version (1.12!) but also the latest versions of !PrinterDM (2.46) and !PrinterLJ and !SysMerge which is something I’ve only heard about until now! Many thanks CC! David Shepherdson 4.10 • Datafile PD − I have sent off for catalogues and demo disc from quite a few PD companies and have ordered software from some of them but certainly the fastest and cheapest I’ve found to date is The Datafile PD in Northern Ireland. All the discs have been sent by return of post and all are almost full with good PD software. Alan Highet A 4.10 4.10 Competition Corner 4.10 Colin Singleton 4.10 A packaging problem this month, loosely based on a real-life situation. 4.10 You and your Archimedes are in charge of the despatch department of a large company. Packages are coming to you along a conveyor belt. They range in weight (clearly marked on each) from 1 to 10,000, with an average of about 100. You have in front of you ten packing cases, each of which may contain packages to a maximum weight of 10,000. 4.10 As each package arrives, you must direct it into one of the ten cases before you even see the next package. It cannot then be moved. If there is no case with sufficient remaining capacity, you must despatch one case and then introduce a new empty one in its place. 4.10 The object of the competition is to write a program to make the necessary decisions with the aim of using the minimum number of packing cases for a sequence of 10,000 packages. 4.10 The sequence of weights is generated in Basic by X%=RND(-seed) followed by repeated calls to 4.10 DEFFNRND : X=RND(1) : X%=1+63 *SQR(X/(1−X)):=X%. 4.10 This ensures (I hope) a realistic range with about 70% of the numbers less than the average, but a small number very much larger. 4.10 When you have developed your strategy, please send me your program, designed so that I can introduce my chosen seed, which will ensure that each entry is given the same sequence of 10,000 numbers. The program should count and display the number of cases used. 4.10 N.B. Although the function can generate numbers over 10,000 (about once in 20,000) the test sequence does not contain such a number. 4.10 Entries and comments please, either via Paul at NCS, or direct to me at 41 St Quentin Drive, Sheffield S17 4PN. 4.10 There are no winners to be announced this month. The May (Eulerian Square) and June (Queens) competitions are still open. 4.10 Puzzle addicts might also be interested in Public Key Cryptography, reviewed elsewhere in this issue (page 44). A 4.10 4.10 Small Ads 4.10 • A3000 1mb upgrade (Morley expandable to 4mb) £50. Phone Fred Bambrough on 081− 885−1034. 4.10 • A3000 (no monitor) £300. Owner upgrading. Phone 0702−586536. 4.10 • A310M RISC-OS, PC emulator, 2 slot BP, 5¼“ interface, ROM/RAM board with 170k RAM, joystick, software, Archive and Risc User. £650 the lot. Phone Bill on 0752−845214. 4.10 • A410/1 − 4 M RAM, 20M drive, £950. Phone Glen on 0932−567614. 4.10 • ABC Compiler £45, GammaPlot £27.50, System Delta Plus £27.50, Twin £10, Voltmace joystick £12, Wordwise Plus (disc) £10, Digisim circuit simulator £12, Interdictor 2 £12. All as new. Phone 0782−771914 after 8 p.m. weekdays. 4.10 • Archimedes 2nd floppy with cables & 2 slot fascia £60, System Delta Plus 2 £30, InterWord disc £15, SpellMaster disc £25, PC emulator unused £50. Phone Howard Wilcox 0446−743770. 4.10 • Archway 2 complete, unregistered £75. Would prefer to swap for PRM’s. Bob Harding, 40 Bremhill, Calne, Wiltshire, SN11 9LD. Phone 0249−813209 evenings. 4.10 • Beebug A4 Scavenger scanner plus sheetfeeder for A300/400 £350 o.n.o. Phone Douglas on 0324−38816 after 6 p.m. 4.10 • Chocks Away 2, Interdictor 2, UIM, Wimp Game, Napoleonic Battle Simulator. £9 each or £40 for all five. Phone Chris on 0256−467574. 4.10 • Computerware hard disk podule. Atomwide 4-slot BP. Acorn 2nd floppy drive for A310. Morley Teletext decoder + power supply. Offers to Chris Walker on 0953−604255. 4.10 • !DeskAAsm − Desktop front end for Acorn Assembler. Send £5 to Darren Sillett, 43 Kingfisher Walk, Ash, Aldershot GU12 6RF. 4.10 • MEG Nuffield Coordinated Science − Admin software to produce all the necessary forms plus class lists for internal use − £10 from Paul Pibworth, 2 Pine Tree Drive, Hucclecote, Gloucester GL3 3AJ. 4.10 • NEC P2200 printer £140, Multipod digitiser sampler V2.20 £75, printer stand £15, floppy drive adaptor £20, FWPlus £25, ArcComm 1.48 £20, Enthar 7 £10. £275 the lot. Phone Chris on 0272−256196 day or 0271−850355 evenings. 4.10 • Original software − Hearsay £28, Knowledge Organiser £26, French Correspondence (unused) £12, Fads (unused) £15. Des Woon on 0255− 882057. 4.10 • Programmers! − If you can program the Archimedes, we may be able to put some work your way. Royalties or flat fee. Contact Brian Kerslake (Topologika) 0733−244682. 4.10 • Qume Sprint Professional daisywheel printer, spare daisywheels, sheet feeder, wide carriage. £120 o.n.o. Phone 0742−745209. 4.10 • Technoscan II handscanner £100. Phone Mark on 0384−455066 after 6 p.m. 4.10 Charity Sales − The following items are available for sale in aid of charity. PLEASE do not just send money − ring us on 0603−766592 to check if the items are still available. Thank you. 4.10 (If you have unwanted software or hardware for Archimedes computers, please send it in to the Archive office. If you have larger items where post would be expensive, just send us details of the item(s) and how the purchaser can get hold of them.) 4.10 Watford 5¼“ disc interface (old type) £10, User Guides £1 + £3 postage, Genesis 1 £20, Herewith the Clues £10, Apocalypse £15, First Word Plus 2 £35, ArcWriter £3, PC Emulator 1.34 £35, Serial Interface/buffer for Epson FX80 £12. A 4.10 4.10 IFEL 4.10 New Artwork 4.10 4.10 MiG29 Flight Simulator 4.10 Ian O’Hara 4.10 MiG 29 is beautifully packaged. It comes on a bright red disc in a large box together with a manual and a glossy coffee table book on the aircraft. The latter is spoilt by having some quite nice photos split between two pages which ruins them. With all the flashy packaging, it is easy to see why the game cost £40. 4.10 The disc is unprotected and so the game can be copied onto your hard disc. It uses overlays, so if you have the memory, it is even better to copy it to ramdisc. Waiting for graphics and scenarios to load from floppy is tedious. Protection is provided by having to type in words from the manual in much the same way as for games such as Corruption and The Pawn. 4.10 Once the game is loaded you are presented with a view of Krasna Ploshad and the Kremlin being buzzed every few minutes. If they really flew that low over the square then poor old Lenin would have his bones shaken. Pressing <space> takes you through to the briefing room where you pick your scenario. There are six of these including a training area, buzzing a U.S. sub trapped in the ice, a night time session zapping terrorists and a full scale attack on a certain dictator not so far away from the Straits of Hormuz. All except the last one can be attempted at any time you like but, until you can fly the MiG properly, it’s not a good idea to tangle with an opponent. 4.10 The graphics are very similar to Interdictor II though the colours are better and the animation smoother. The cockpit layout is different but it does not look much like that of the MiG. It is always a problem trying to fit all the dials, etc. in a real cockpit into the bottom half of a computer screen. If you were presented with all the dials it would make the game unplayable. All the instruments you need are there, such as altimeter and artificial horizon. There is also a very useful meter to tell you when your mouse is centred. 4.10 As armament, your plane carries a mixture of 23 mm cannon, unguided rockets, AA-8 and AS-7, the number of the last two depending on the mission. If the threat comes from the air then more Aphids are carried. 4.10 Having picked a mission in the briefing room, you get a pretty picture to illustrate it. When you are bored with looking at this, you press <space>, don a g-suit and strap in. Start the engine, light the after- burner, release the wheel breaks and the plane accelerates down the runway. At around 3-400 km/hr back comes the stick and you are airborne. Then it’s up with the landing gear and check the direction to the first way point. Gaining height, you reduce the throttle and turn towards the first target. Wings vertical, pull back the stick, you feel your g-suit inflating and you are into a 6-g turn. (As yet I haven’t managed to go above 6-g.) Unloading g, you line up on the target, select your weapon and keep a sharp lookout. If you have a guided weapon selected, you can use the helmet mounted sight to locate the target. Spotting tanks, guns and planes from several thousand metres is not easy. At 200 metres per second you need good eyesight and fast reactions. Engage and destroy the target and home to the O Club for a bottle of ice cold Stolichnaya. 4.10 If you’re unlucky and are hit by triple A, SAMs or a boggie then you can punch out. A simple key press and you lose a few cm in height as the ejection forces compress your spine. You can watch your aircraft fly away, bits falling off, as you slowly drift down and ponder on your first meal in the Bagdhad or Peking Hilton. 4.10 No longer are you restricted to the cockpit. Press <V> and you can view the aircraft from outside. Press <M> when a guided weapon is in the air and you can see what it looks like to fly up the tail-pipe of a Shenyang F-7M. If you have ever wondered what it is like to ride a weapon as in Doctor Strangelove here is your chance. Be careful though. Make sure that your plane is safe. I have flown into the cumulo-granite clouds while riding a Kerry down to an oil rig. You can also watch yourself take off from the control tower or buzz a US sub from the sub. It all adds colour. 4.10 The one thing I really do like about the game is that you can fly about without being shot down in the first few minutes or having to achieve high scores to visit another scenario. I like flying round and exploring the world. In MiG 29, you can do this. You can also take an aggressive role and kill everything in sight. It is the best flight simulator I have yet seen on the Archimedes though I have not played Chocks Away. 4.10 There are one or two slight niggles. The packaging is very glossy. I am sure it displays well and adds to the price but it does nothing for the program. After going through title screens for the third time they get boring and after the tenth, positively annoying. After being shot down, all you want to do is to get back in the hot seat again with the minimum of delay. However, the wait is not as bad as in some games. When looking out the cockpit it would be nice to be able to look up and down. With your wings vertical, you need to be able to look up to see where you are going. Left and right are useless in this situation. 4.10 My ‘ideal’ flight simulator has yet to be written. For example, it would be nice to get a skeleton into which one could drop different aircraft and scenarios. Until such a program comes along, I would recommend MiG 29 even with its high price − about £40 depending on the dealer you buy it from. (£38 through Archive.) A 4.10 4.10 Multi-Media Column 4.10 Ian Lynch 4.10 News 4.10 Multi-media is continues to gain momentum, with Commodore launching CDTV, a system built around the Amiga and targeted on home users. Windows M will improve the capability of Windows 3 to run multi-media application on MS-DOS based systems and Apple have recently released System 7 which provides the Mac with some of the facilities we have been used to with RISC-OS for over two years. 4.10 Unfortunately, I have to w