Archive Magazine 1995/ARCHIVE95.iso/discs/pipeline/4_01/Gaynor/Letter

Text File | 1990-07-10 | 6KB | 139 lines

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%CO:A,68,68%%R% 7 Bedford Road
%R% Letchworth
%R% Herts.
%R%SG6 4DJ
%R%10.7.90
%L%Gerald Fitton
%L%c/o ABACUS Training,
%L%29 Okus Grove,
%L%Upper Stratton,
%L%Swindon
%L%Wilts.

Dear Gerald,

%L%Thank you for your letter of 2nd July. Please excuse my delay in
replying as I have been on holiday. I enjoy the Pipeline articles
and appreciate the work you have put in. As far as the material I
have sent you please feel free to use it as you wish. I am quite
happy to see it go into the public domain. In fact please feel free
to use anything I send you unless I specifically say otherwise.

%L%As I said in a previous letter I have since found that the
complicated method I was using for my accounts was unnecessary &
the COL & ROW functions were a simpler approach. I have therefore
modified my original example to use this method. I include both the
old and the new method in sub-directories within the Accounts
directory.

%L%I have had a series of upgrades from Colton. It would seem that
every time they fix one bug another pops up. I must say though that
they are most helpful. I currently have version 3.10R (01-May-90).
In case you haven't got it yet here is an update on what it does:
1. It fixes some nasty bugs in version 3.07R.
%L%2. It allows the border colour to be changed.
%L%3. I changes the way macros work. This one should be noted as it
may affect existing macros. In my address macro I have the formula
@@D@@ to pick up the existing date. In version 3.1 all text slots get
snapshotted when the file is saved (according to Colton this is by
popular request). Therefore in order to work as originally planned
the date should be set to @@@D@@@ which snapshots to @@D@@. Be careful
though, if it is reloaded & saved it must be amended back to @@@D@@@!

%L%Version 3.10R introduces a bug. When printing the "Wait between
pages" does not wait for forced page breaks. It works OK when a new
page occurs naturally. Unfortunately this affects me as most of my
printing is A4 and I do not have a sheet feeder. Colton are working
on a fix.

%L%I have enclosed a disc with the samples on, also some other bits &
pieces described below. I do not need this disc sent back. I have
aquired a few old discs from work that have no write protect
slider. I can write to these by wrapping a 5.25 write protect tab
around the disc. This is not entirely satisfactory & so I have
decided to use them up a one-trip discs.

%L%I have included my Key macro and a print & pipedream file of the
key layout I use. The Define Command feature has allowed me to
consolidate to one layout for spreadsheets & wordprocessing. The
Pipeline file has my specific code at the start to put my printer
(Juki) into 15 cpi & 8 lpi. I use the ! for vertical lines as there
is no vertical bar on my small daisywheel. I have also included my
Juki driver. The key layout uses 3 macros, F4 for formatting,
Ctrl/Shift F9 for my address and Ctrl/Shift F10 for the current
date. This last one I use for replacing the date in my address when
re-editing an old letter. These assume the macros are in a macro
path.

I found the article on using Pipedream as a relational database
very interesting and played around quite a bit myself. However I
still cannot see Pipeline as a relational database. It lacks so
many %H2%vital%H2% features. What it can do it is more of technical
interest than practical. One major problem is that relationships
must be defined at the cell level. Each time a new record is added
the relationship must be defined. For a database it MUST be
possible to define the relationships at the file level. Yes I know
Keith Matthews did a clever job with his example, but that was very
specific and did not show that Pipeline can be used as a relational
database. I'll send to a detailed treatise on my points if you can
bear it!

%L%Now a sad story. I have been looking out for a decent relational
%L%database for the Archimedes. I came across DataVision (by Silicon
Vision). This promised good relational facilities with relational
enquiry & reporting. Unfortunately I could find no reviews
anywhere, but it looked very good from the advertising leaflet. I
paid my money & discovered it is nothing of the sort. It appears to
have a simple lookup facility at data entry only. It has some good
features and some appallingly implemented ones, but relational it
certainly is not. I am currently in dispute with Silicon Vision and
trying to get my money back. I know my rights, but I'm not too
hopeful of getting them.

%L%I would be interested in subscribing to your new disc. I enclose ú5
for the first one to see how much of it is useful to me. I don't
mean that in a derogatory way, but ú20 a year is quite a lot &
whether I want to pay that money out will depend how much value I
get out of it personally. I would also be interested in writing an
article for the "Magazine on a disc". I'll think about whether I
have anything worth saying. One area of interest may be how to
customise the !RUN & !PATH files for using a RAM disc (for macros)
& a print buffer. Another possibility is the way I have customised
the keyboard layout. I could also write a critique on the
relational aspects of Pipedream! Please let me know. I am quite
happy to have a go & for you to throw the results in the waste bin
if you don't like them.



               Yours Sincerely





               Stephen Gaynor

P.S. I have just received the July Archive. I feel very flattered
to have such a large piece of my letter included in your column. I
also note that Colton are distributing version 3.11. Hopefully this
has cleared up the bugs from 3.10. I will send off for the upgrade
immediately.