Archive Magazine 1995/ARCHIVE95.iso/text/magazine/volume_04/issue_10

Text File | 1995-06-25 | 201KB | 4,510 lines

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 canæt tell you any
more but as soon as I find out anything more definite, Iæll let you
know. Watch this space.....
4.10
Happy holiday!
4.10
Despite the fact that itæs July already and Iæve only had my shorts on
one day so far this ösummerò, it is the holiday season. In the four
years of the life of Archive, weæve never had more that a weekæs holiday
at a time. (Big öAhhh!ò for Paul!) We wanted to visit our friends in
North Carolina but felt we couldnæt 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 Iæm away.
Thanks very much.
4.10
Hope you have a good holiday, too!
4.10

4.10
Products Available
4.10
Å    A4 paper trays Ö We can now get hold of spare A4 paper trays for the
Laser Direct (Qume) at ú66, the Laser Direct Hi-Res (Canon LBP8) at ú54
and the Canon LBP4 at ú57. It makes life much easier not to have to keep
taking headed note paper and plain paper in and out of paper trays Ö
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
Å    A4 flatbed scanner GT-4000 Ö 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 ú1799 +VAT for the full system
or ú715 + VAT for the software and interface board if you already have
the GT4000 scanner. (ú1955 and ú660 respectively through Archive.)
4.10
Å    A3000 Special Access Ö 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 (ú679 +VAT) or with an Acorn monitor and a PRES stand (which
allows the computer to move about independently of the stand) for ú899
+VAT. There is a special price for registered charities or those who are
registered disabled Ö ú695 and ú953.50 respectively including VAT.
Applications forms for these special prices should be available for your
local dealer Ö Archive also has forms and can supply these SA packs.
4.10
Å    Arc Recorder Ö Oak Solutions have produced a very cheap system for
sound sampling (ú29.95 +VAT or ú33 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
Å    ARCticulate Ö The current spate of Archimedes speech generators
continues.. 4th Dimension have produced an öanimated speech synthesiserò
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. ú24.95 from 4th Dimension or ú23 through Archive.
4.10
Å    ARM3 price drop Ö There seems to be a bit of price war going on with
ARM3æs and so weæve been able to bring down the price of the Aleph One
ARM3 to ú420 inc VAT.
4.10
Å    Careware N║13 Ö We have put Jonathan Martenæs 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 Ö>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
Å    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 Solutionsæ 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 ClassROMæs to more and
more of the Archimedes so that fewer stations would have to load their
applications via the network. Prices are ú150 (+VAT) for the management
software plus ú344 for each 20M classROM unit or ú445 for the 45M
version. Archive prices (inc VAT) are ú160, ú375 and ú485 respectively.
4.10
Å    Creator Ö 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 ú38.95 from Alpine Software or ú36 through
Archive.
4.10
Å    Digital Storage Oscilloscope Ö 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 ú323.10 and ú445.50 +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
Å    Fine Racer Ö 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 ú19.95 inc VAT.
4.10
Å    Imagine is not just another art pack Ö 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 ú39.95 inc VAT or ú37 through
Archive. Separately available are packs of images for ú9.95 +VAT each
including Pirates, Victorians and Romans.
4.10
Å    Impression Business Supplement Ö 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 ú49 +VAT or
ú53 through Archive.
4.10
Å    MiG29 Ö a new flight simulator from the originators of Interdictor Ö
SIMIS. For full details of this, see the review on page 24. The price is
ú40.85 inc VAT or ú38 through Archive.
4.10
Å    New PC Emulator is (almost!) here! Ö A press release of 19/6/91
confidently predicted the release of the new PC Emulator on 21st June.
Itæs not actually available yet as I write (2/7/91) but it should be in
öabout three weeksò. 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 öfull CD-ROM
support via CDFS and MSCD extensionsò. 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,
ú99 plus VAT or ú96 through Archive, and there is an upgrade for
existing users for ú29 (+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
Å    PrimeArt is Minervaæs 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 ú79.95 +VAT or ú87 through
Archive.
4.10
Å    Removable drive prices down again Ö This time itæs the Atomwide
removable drive with the high power fans Ö they are now down to ú555 inc
VAT or ú755 with an Oak podule.
4.10
Å Rhapsody II is available now for ú61.95 inc VAT (or ú57 through
Archive) and there is an upgrade through Clares for ú15.50 inc VAT Ö
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
ölater this yearò.)
4.10
Å    Swedish Impression Ö If you want a Swedish version of Impression 2.1,
contact Information Technology Services, Sj÷tullsg. 3, 602 27
Norrk÷ping, Sweden (11Ö127758, fax 11Ö126545). Most programs on the
Applications Discs are also available in Swedish, as is PipeDream 3.
4.10
Å    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 ú32
through Archive.
4.10
Å    UltraSonic Sound System Ö 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 Ö 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
ú30 from Alpine Software or ú28 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.ááA
4.10

4.10
Government Health Warning Ö 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! Itæs not surprising that people reject what I call
öChurchianityò.
4.10
The church also, sadly, contains a number of people for whom Christian
ity is a social circle with mildly altruistic aims Ö a bit like a
religious version of the Round Table Ö ödoing good to the poorò and all
that. They think that makes them a Christian. Rubbish! Thatæs not true
Christianity either Ö itæs what I call öDogoodianityò.
4.10
Donæt get me wrong, I think Christians should get together (notice that
I didnæt say ögo to churchò) to worship God Ö I really enjoy going to
church on Sunday. Mind you, the church I go to isnæt your average Church
of England church! I do enjoy church social activities Ö 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 Ö locally, nationally and
internationally. But none of these things makes me a Christian.
4.10
Anyone can be negative but what is true Christianity? Itæs 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 thatæs
because, in this country, we lead such öcomfortableò 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. (0742Ö700661)
4.10
4mation    11 Castle Park Road, Whiddon Valley, Barnstaple, Devon, EX32
8PA. (0271Ö25353) (Ö22974)
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. (0223Ö245200) (Ö210685)
4.10
Ace Computing (p16)    27 Victoria
Road, Cambridge, CB4 3BW. (0223Ö322559) (Ö69180)
4.10
Aleph One Ltd    The Old Courthouse, Bottisham, Cambridge, CB5 9BA.
(0223Ö811679) (Ö812713)
4.10
Alpine Software     P.O.Box 25, Portadown, Craigavon, BT63 5UT.
(0762Ö342510)
4.10
Armadillo Systems Ltd    17 Glaston
Road, Uppingham, Leicester, LE15 9PX. (0572Ö82Ö2499)
4.10
Arnor Ltd    611 Lincoln Road, Peterborough, PE1 3HA. (0733Ö68909) (Ö67299)
4.10
Atomwide Ltd (p 6)    23 The
Greenway, Orpington, Kent, BR5 2AY. (0689Ö838852) (Ö896088)
4.10
Beebug Ltd    117 Hatfield Road, St Albans, Herts, AL1 4JS. (0727Ö40303)
(Ö60263)
4.10
Clares Micro Supplies    98 Mid
dlewich Road, Rudheath, Northwich, Cheshire, CW9 7DA. (0606Ö48511)
(Ö48512)
4.10
Colton Software (p15)    149Ö151 St
Neots Road, Hardwick, Cambridge, CB3 7QJ. (0954Ö211472) (Ö211607)
4.10
Computer Concepts (p30/31)    Gaddesden
Place, Hemel Hempstead, Herts, HP2 6EX. (0442Ö63933) (Ö231632)
4.10
Data Store    6 Chatterton Road, Bromley, Kent. (081Ö460Ö8991)
(Ö313Ö0400)
4.10
DT Software    13 Northumberland Road, Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, CV32
6HE.
4.10
DT Software    FREEPOST, Cambridge CB3 7BR. (0223Ö841099)
4.10
Electronic Font Foundry    Bridge
House, 18 Brockenhurst Road, Ascot, SL5 9DL. (0344Ö28698)
4.10
Eterna    4 rue de Massacan, 34740 Z.I. Vendargues, France. (010Ö33 +67 70
53 97)
4.10
Ian Copestake Software    10 Frost
Drive, Wirral, L61 4XL. (051Ö632Ö1234)(Ö3434)
4.10
IFEL (p23)    36 Upland Drive, Plymouth, Devon, PL6 6BD. (0752Ö847286)
4.10
Intelligent Interfaces    43B Wood
Street, Stratford-on-Avon, CV37 6JQ. (0789Ö415875) (Ö450926)
4.10
Lingenuity (Lindis) (p12)    P.O.Box 10,
Halesworth, Suffolk, IP19 0DX. (0986Ö85Ö476) (Ö460)
4.10
Longman-Logotron    Dales Brewery, Gwydir Street, Cambridge, CB1 2LJ.
(0223Ö323656) (Ö460208)
4.10
Minerva Systems    Minerva House, Baring Crescent, Exeter, EX1 1TL.
(0392Ö437756) (Ö421762)
4.10
MJD Software     13 Burnham Way, London, W13 9YE. (081Ö567Ö4284)
4.10
Oak Solutions (p11)    Cross Park
House, Low Green, Rawdon, Leeds, LS19 6HA. (0532Ö502615) (Ö506868)
4.10
P.R.E.S.    6 Ava House, Chobham, Surrey. (0276Ö72046)
4.10
RESOURCE    Exeter Road, Doncaster, DN2 4PY. (0302Ö340331)
4.10
Safesell Exhibitions (p5)    Market
House, Cross Road, Tadworth, Surrey KT20 5SR.
4.10
Sherston Software     Swan Barton,
Sherston, Malmesbury, Wilts. SN16 0LH. (0666Ö840433) (Ö840048)
4.10
Silicon Vision Ltd    Signal
House, Lyon Road, Harrow, Middlesex, HA1 2AG. (081Ö422Ö2274) (Ö427Ö5169)
4.10
Simtron Ltd    4 Clarence Drive, East Grinstead, W. Sussex, RH19 4RZ.
(0342Ö328188)
4.10
Soft Rock Software    124 Marissal
Road, Henbury, Bristol, BS10 7NP. (0272Ö503639 evenings)
4.10
The Serial Port    Burcott Manor, Wells, Somerset, BA5 1NH. (0243Ö531194)
(Ö531196)
4.10
Topologika    P.O. Box 39, Stilton, Peterborough, PE7 3RL. (0733Ö244682)
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. (0661Ö33017) (Ö36163)
4.10
XOB    Balkeerie, Eassie by Forfar, Angus, DD8 1SR. (0307Ö84364)
4.10

4.10
Safesell
4.10
NEW
4.10

4.10
Hints and Tips
4.10
Å    *Count command Ö In Archive 4.6 p8 the hint about *Count, is only
partly right. The *Count command only counts data. This means that
directories indeed donæt 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
Å    DataLoad problems? Ö The PRM says that if a DataLoad message isnæt
acknowledged, the sending task should delete <Wimp$Scrap> and give an
error. However, I think this is wrong. You arenæt guaranteed that the
scrap file used is, in fact, <Wimp$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 Ö you get told that it wasnæt a secure file, so this should
be safe.  Stephen Burke, Liverpool.
4.10
Å    Hard Drive problems Ö BEWARE!!! If you have a fairly old computer Ö 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 öfrom your local Acorn dealerò or they can be bought from
N.C.S. as part of an öAnnual Service Kitò Ö including a new pair of
batteries Ö priced ú3.)
4.10
Å    How long is a line? Ö 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 ÉBasic User Guideæ issue 1 dated 1988, it says ÉA line
of Basic can contain up to 238 characters...æ but on page 386 it says
that ÉAs in a Basic program, the length of a line is limited (by the
Basic Editor) to 251 characters..æ. 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 ÉCHECK240æ 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
CHAINöBtestò to see that it runs. Then try
4.10
*SPOOL TEMP
4.10
LIST
4.10
*SPOOL
4.10
*EXEC TEMP
4.10
CHAIN öCHECK240ò
4.10
and reply öTEMPò at the prompt. Kate Crennell, Didcot.
4.10
Å    Printer drivers Ö 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 öStar
LC24-10ò by altering the line before the line öprinter number:2ò. The
default loading is achieved by amending the line öprinter:01ò to
öprinter:02ò. This line is found towards the end of the data file
immediately before the line ölocation:1ò. 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
Å    Printing A5 on an A4 printer Ö 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 Ö or the LBP4æs for that matter
Ö but it is possible. All you need is a pile of A5 sheets of scrap paper
sellotaped up into a solid block about ╜ö thick (or ╛ò 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 donæt print on the lower half of the (A4) paper that
is not actually there. Having said that, I have been using A5 paper on
Qumeæs, Canons and Mac Laserwriters for years and have occasionally left
the öA5ò 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 (ú66) and Canon LBP4
(ú57) and Canon LBP8 (ú54)
4.10
(A possible alternative to the paper is a block of wood the same size
and thickness but I havenæt actually tried it.)
4.10
Å    Psychedelic sound-to-light Ö 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 öOS_UpdateMEMCò,768,1792
4.10
The screen can be returned to normal with either a MODE command or with:
4.10
SYS öOS_UpdateMEMCò,1536,1792
4.10
Rob Swain, Kent
4.10
Å    Render Bender on SCSI hard disc drives revisited Ö 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 ÉRenderæ Basic listing: change the SWI &40242 to &403C6 in line
15810
4.10
In ÉAnirouteæ Basic listing: change the SWI &40242 to &403C6 in line
6670
4.10
Atle Mjelde Bσrdholt, Norway
4.10
Å    Running one application inside another Ö 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 öThe Archimedeanò 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 Ömin xxxK Ömax xxxK
4.10
Run ö<Impression$Dir>.!RunImageò %*0
4.10
The xxxK in the Wimpslot command should be exactly the same as used
earlier in the !Run file Ö the precise amount of memory needed will vary
from one version of Impression to another. Hugh Eagle, Horsham.
4.10
Å    Sound improvements Ö 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
Å    Sound voice changes Ö Among the (many) things that annoy me are those
professional programmers who alter your Sound Voice for their games
which otherwise claim to be öRISC-OS Compatibleò. 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 Useræs ChannelVoice 1
4.10
SYS öSound_AttachVoiceò,1,0 to ,user_voice%
4.10

4.10
REM Because ChannelVoice 1 now equal to 0, reset
4.10
SYS öSound_AttachVoiceò,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
SYSöSound_AttachVoiceò,1,user_voice%
4.10
David Shepherdson
4.10
Å    Toolkit Plus update Ö Claresæ Toolkit Plus usually produces a ÉBad
disc addressæ 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 Épositionæ 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 Éword modeæ and zero this instruction.
4.10
You should now be able to edit E format discs.
4.10
S Edwards, Wordsley
4.10
Å    Toolkit Plus with SCSI Ö Claresæ 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 ÉADFSæ with ÉSCSIæ 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 ÉToolkit+æ to ÉSCSIToolsæ)
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 Ö for instance, !Edit could be used to
replace ÉAEDITæ in Toolkit+ with ÉWEDITæ in SCSITools.
4.10
Sean Kelly, London
4.10
Impression HintsáandáTips
4.10
Å    Abbreviations Ö I use abbreviations quite a lot such as öimpò for
Impression and just örò for Archimedes but I often want to say, for
example öá...using DrawPlus (Careware 13)...ò and although öcaò and öCaò
are both set up to expand to öCarewareò, using ö(caò doesnæt work. There
is no easy way round it as far as I know Ö you just have to put ö(caò
into the abbreviations dictionary to expand to ö(Carewareò.
4.10
Å    Bullets Ö Weæve 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
Å    Creating tables Ö 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 öcellò 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 ödisappearò 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.ááA
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 ú695 (exclusive VAT!) and so-called Ébudgetæ DTP
programs for IBMs weighing in at ú70 to ú160, I wonder if we Archimedes
users really know how fortunate we are when it comes to good, cheap
software.
4.10
The öbudgetò DTP programs for IBMs canæt even word-process Ö 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 23╜ size instead of just 23 or 24 point size Ö a revolution no doubt
but one that almost all DTP and word-processors for our Archimedes
machines manage easily!
4.10
Archimedes Ö no master of colours!
4.10
There is a difference between modern IBMs and Mac IIæs 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 Ö 24-bit
colours are available.
4.10
RISC-OS has an upper limit of 8 bits per pixel, 256 colours Ö 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 canæt 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 Ö !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 letæs 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 birdæs-eye view) and if we stand just outside
the field the angles get very odd indeed Ö 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 Ö an illustratoræs nightmare!
Not even all CAD programs seems to be able to solve it correctly....
4.10
Secondly Ö 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 öinsideò 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 couldnæt be used Ö 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 Ö itæs 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 doesnæt show up on the
finished result:
4.10
This is now our object! A öflapping flagò 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 Ö I could recommend
Express Publisher (ú159.95) as the ölow-costò alternative!
4.10
For Archimedes users the cost is just ú21, including two manuals and
lots of sample files (available from Ian Copestake Software).ááA
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
Å Acornæs ölook and feelò Ö 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 Ö 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 Ö 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 Ö and thatæs 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 donæt, tell us!)
4.10
Jochen Konietzko, Koeln, Germany
4.10
Å    Arcscan III Ö I was pleased to see a review of ArcScan III in Archive
4.8; and particularly pleased that what your reviewer called his öfirst
niggleò 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 öSave findsò 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
ú18 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, thatæs not a typographical error, Lee has developed
Arcscan III from version 0.5 to version 6.1 in just six months.
4.10
Å    ArcScan III again Ö I enjoyed Eric Ayersæ 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.áBetter handling of punctuation, preferably ignoring it all. My
experiments show that the current version of ArcScan III ignores both
ö.ò and ö,ò as word separators but not ö;ò or ö É ò.
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 ÉFormEdæ. 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
ÉMagScanæ feature lost in the translation to ArcScan. I donæt want my
search slowed down by looking through hundreds of ÉGamesæ when I only
want ÉProgramming Articlesæ.   Kate Crennell, Didcot.
4.10
Å    Assembler speed confusion Ö 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 itæs 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 canæt do that for too long. DMA access itself always uses
quadword chunks. The ARM doesnæt know anything about the four word limit
and normally thinks itæs doing sequential access all the time; itæs MEMC
which forces a non-sequential access whenever bits 2 and 3 of the
address are zero.  Stephen Burke, Liverpool.
4.10
Å    Clares Ö I use Pipedream regularly in my office but, although I find
it very efficient, it hasnæt 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 monthæs 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 couldnæt 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
wasnæt enough. I recommend that anyone wanting to purchase a spreadsheet
give Schema a look.
4.10
Å    IDE drives from Ian Copestake Ö Having had my A3000 for a little over
a year now and getting well öintoò 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 öEò
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 ú400 giving me a massive 160 Mbytes of
FAST storage. (MR45æs run at 590 kbytes/second which could hardly be
called slow and extra 42M cartridges are only ú75 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 Ö 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 Ö 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, öBroken
Directoryò. 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, öBroken Directoryò. 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 öjust over the hillò 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
donæt know if the interface board was at fault or if I hadnæt 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
Å    PC Emulator Ö 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 Ésubjectivelyæ the speed is
much improved. In fact, I donæt find it much slower than the 386SX PCæs
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 Ö 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 Ö 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
Å    Schema Ö (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 ö... sets up a badly
designed spreadsheet...ò and that ö... inserting and deleting rows and
columns ... is only needed if you make a mistake in the design of your
sheetò. Balderdash, Clares! Who are you to decide if users are ögoodò or
öbadò designers of spreadsheets. Why canæt 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
Å    Spreadsheet comparisons Ö 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 Scottæs 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 3æs 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 öTidy Upò command. In
the example given above I find that Tidy Up reduces PipeDreamá3æs memory
to only 736k.
4.10
Robert Macmillan, Colton Software.ááA
4.10

4.10
Help!!!!
4.10
Å    Archimedes artwork Ö 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 0922Ö418923 any time except 8 a.m.
to 6 p.m. Tues to Sat.
4.10
Å    Colour separations Ö 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
Å    Fortran friends wanted Ö I am looking for fellow Fortran programmers
with a view to swapping utilities, libraries and tips on using Fortran77
on the Archimedes. Contact [e-mail]. RL.DE or snail mail @
K.M.Crennell, Greytops, The Lane, Chilton, Didcot, OX11 0SE.
4.10
Å    High resolution greyscale monitors Ö We have been trying (without a
lot of success) to find a good greyscale monitor for use with the
Archimedes Ö especially with DTP in mind. One reader is using a Viking
II 20ö 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
Å    Star LC-200 colour printer Ö 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 ö:Aò on the right hand side of the page. Can anybody help ?
A.M.Bσrdholt, Storgt 89, N-3190 Horten, Norway.
4.10
Help offered
4.10
Å    Laser printing Ö 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 0761Ö431800
after 6 p.m.ááA
4.10

4.10
Credit where itæs due
4.10
Å    Computer Concepts Ö 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 ú15.
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 Iæve only heard about until
now! Many thanks CC! David Shepherdson
4.10
Å    Datafile PD Ö 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 Iæve 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 HighetááA
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/(1ÖX)):=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). ááA
4.10

4.10
Small Ads
4.10
Å    A3000 1mb upgrade (Morley expandable to 4mb) ú50. Phone Fred Bambrough
on 081Ö 885Ö1034.
4.10
Å    A3000 (no monitor) ú300. Owner upgrading. Phone 0702Ö586536.
4.10
Å    A310M RISC-OS, PC emulator, 2 slot BP, 5╝ö interface, ROM/RAM board
with 170k RAM, joystick, software, Archive and Risc User. ú650 the lot.
Phone Bill on 0752Ö845214.
4.10
Å    A410/1 Ö 4 M RAM, 20M drive, ú950. Phone Glen on 0932Ö567614.
4.10
Å    ABC Compiler ú45, GammaPlot ú27.50, System Delta Plus ú27.50, Twin
ú10, Voltmace joystick ú12, Wordwise Plus (disc) ú10, Digisim circuit
simulator ú12, Interdictor 2 ú12. All as new. Phone 0782Ö771914 after 8
p.m. weekdays.
4.10
Å    Archimedes 2nd floppy with cables & 2 slot fascia ú60, System Delta
Plus 2 ú30, InterWord disc ú15, SpellMaster disc ú25, PC emulator unused
ú50. Phone Howard Wilcox 0446Ö743770.
4.10
Å    Archway 2 complete, unregistered ú75. Would prefer to swap for PRMæs.
Bob Harding, 40 Bremhill, Calne, Wiltshire, SN11 9LD. Phone 0249Ö813209
evenings.
4.10
Å    Beebug A4 Scavenger scanner plus sheetfeeder for A300/400 ú350 o.n.o.
Phone Douglas on 0324Ö38816 after 6 p.m.
4.10
Å    Chocks Away 2, Interdictor 2, UIM, Wimp Game, Napoleonic Battle
Simulator. ú9 each or ú40 for all five. Phone Chris on 0256Ö467574.
4.10
Å    Computerware hard disk podule. Atomwide 4-slot BP. Acorn 2nd floppy
drive for A310. Morley Teletext decoder + power supply. Offers to Chris
Walker on 0953Ö604255.
4.10
Å    !DeskAAsm Ö Desktop front end for Acorn Assembler. Send ú5 to Darren
Sillett, 43 Kingfisher Walk, Ash, Aldershot GU12 6RF.
4.10
Å    MEG Nuffield Coordinated Science Ö Admin software to produce all the
necessary forms plus class lists for internal use Ö ú10 from Paul
Pibworth, 2 Pine Tree Drive, Hucclecote, Gloucester GL3 3AJ.
4.10
Å    NEC P2200 printer ú140, Multipod digitiser sampler V2.20 ú75, printer
stand ú15, floppy drive adaptor ú20, FWPlus ú25, ArcComm 1.48 ú20,
Enthar 7 ú10. ú275 the lot. Phone Chris on 0272Ö256196 day or
0271Ö850355 evenings.
4.10
Å    Original software Ö Hearsay ú28, Knowledge Organiser ú26, French
Correspondence (unused) ú12, Fads (unused) ú15. Des Woon on 0255Ö
882057.
4.10
Å    Programmers! Ö If you can program the Archimedes, we may be able to
put some work your way. Royalties or flat fee. Contact Brian Kerslake
(Topologika) 0733Ö244682.
4.10
Å    Qume Sprint Professional daisywheel printer, spare daisywheels, sheet
feeder, wide carriage. ú120 o.n.o. Phone 0742Ö745209.
4.10
Å    Technoscan II handscanner ú100. Phone Mark on 0384Ö455066 after 6 p.m.
4.10
Charity Sales Ö The following items are available for sale in aid of
charity. PLEASE do not just send money Ö ring us on 0603Ö766592 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 5╝ö disc interface (old type) ú10, User Guides ú1 + ú3 postage,
Genesis 1 ú20, Herewith the Clues ú10, Apocalypse ú15, First Word Plus 2
ú35, ArcWriter ú3, PC Emulator 1.34 ú35, Serial Interface/buffer for
Epson FX80 ú12.ááA
4.10

4.10
IFEL
4.10
New Artwork
4.10

4.10
MiG29 Flight Simulator
4.10
Ian OæHara
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 ú40.
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, itæs 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 itæs 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 havenæt 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 youære 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 Éidealæ 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 Ö about ú40 depending on the dealer you buy
it from. (ú38 through Archive.) ááA
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 write this column before the multi-media show
in Olympia, but I know that Acorn have one or two exciting things to
show. I will give a full report in next monthæs column.
4.10
Avanti
4.10
One piece of software I saw recently on a visit to Fulbourn Road was
Avanti, developed by Westland (of helicopter fame). They are using
Avanti to author training materials for use by themselves and other
industries. I must say that the demonstration was very impressive, as is
the price Ö about ú5,000 to non-education users and ú1,000 to education.
Before you all fall about laughing, Authorware which is possibly the
biggest name in Mac and PC multi-media authoring is similarly priced.
4.10
Cost-effective?
4.10
I talked to a company a few months ago and watched Authorware being used
on a Mac to generate applications for use in medical and scientific
training. They told me that the software saved its purchase price on the
first application since they previously wrote things in Pascal. Avanti,
on first sight has a lot of features similar to Authorware and the demos
were just as impressive. It isnæt the sort of application most Archive
readers would buy, but a question I am going to try and find the answer
to, is whether or not it is better value than Genesis II. I suspect that
anything that can be done in Avanti can be done in Genesis II, but the
main criteria will be whether or not it is much easier to achieve with
Avanti and whether applications run more speedily or take up less memory
and disc space. With applications as complex as these, it will probably
take some time to find out.
4.10
Genesis II reference guide
4.10
I have now received a copy of the Genesis II script language guide.
Personally, I have found it to be a model of clarity. If anyone wants to
learn programming gently, a copy of Genesis II and this book will take
some beating. Genesis scripts are very straight forward to understand
and since a lot of the code is automatically generated, it is far easier
to get satisfying results quickly than it is with Basic or C.
4.10
Languages
4.10
One thing which is quite interesting about both Genesis II and Avanti is
their relationship with Basic. Genesis II, and as far as I know Avanti,
are both largely written in Basic. Whereas Genesis II generates its own
script language, Avanti generates Basic V which can then be edited. C
programmers, particularly those not familiar with Archimedes Basic will
no doubt scoff, but it is a tribute to Basic V that such sophisticated
applications are possible. Indeed, it is outcomes which matter not the
process by which these are realised and I, and most other users,
couldnæt care less if the application is written in Chinese as long as
it does the job it is intended to do.
4.10
Correspondence
4.10
Letters have been somewhat thin on the ground recently, so come on,
letæs hear from you!
4.10
Michael Roscoe recently bought a copy of Genesis 1 second hand and
although pleased with it he was surprised by its lack of capability when
used as a conventional database. I think that it is fair to say that if
you want a conventional database manager with standard report genera
tion, fast indexed searches etc, then Genesis is not the right tool.
!Squirrel, Flexifile or Junior Database are far more geared towards this
type of work. Genesis is also quite capable as a simple type setter and
you can do some reasonable DTP, but donæt expect the sophistication and
speed of Impression!
4.10
Strengths
4.10
Genesis I is really best for making short presentations which involve
graphics, sound, text and films linked in arbitrary ways (hence multi-
media). It does have some pretty severe limitations, particularly on a
1Mb machine without a hard disc, since, as Michael points out, it is
pretty memory hungry.
4.10
Data galore
4.10
Genesis II gets round these problems to some extent by compressing all
the files, but unfortunately the nature of the multi-media game is lots
and lots of data. In fact, a öholy grailò of the multi-media industry is
to achieve full screen motion video with at least TV quality. Imagine
mode 15 screens, each of 160k being displayed 30 times a second. Thatæs
4.8 Mb per second Ö more if you want audio too. At this rate, a hard
disc doesnæt last long. Of course files can be compressed, but there are
limits if quality is not to suffer and all the compression/decompression
takes quite a bit out of the processor.
4.10
Genesis II is also a lot more flexible to use than Genesis I, because of
the script language. It is quite feasible to write RISC-OS applications
in Genesis II but, again, the price to pay for speed and ease of
generation is usually relative slowness and a lot of code to achieve
relatively little. Take for example Acornæs desktop calculator which is
8k of code. The calculator written in Genesis 2 as an example takes 17k
of disc space, but over 300k of application space in RAM. Admittedly,
the Genesis calculator is better presented than the Acorn one, but it
does take over 15 seconds to load from the hard disc on my 540. Both
calculators perform pretty well as quickly as each other.
4.10
I suspect that one of the reasons for the memory overhead is that the
routines for playing films and sound samples will be loaded even though
the calculator does not make use of them. In this case, a considerably
more sophisticated application may not take up very much more memory so
the relationship between memory overhead, speed of operation and
application complexity is not a straight forward linear function.
4.10
Horses for courses
4.10
The last paragraph should not put you off. What I am trying to illus
trate is the fact that there is no such thing as a free lunch. You need
to consider what tasks are most appropriately tackled using ARM code,
Basic, C, Genesis etc and choose the appropriate tool. Further, as
processing power increases and storage costs reduce, programs like
Genesis II will be able to realistically tackle more complicated tasks.
4.10
It is very satisfying to generate professional looking applications and
Genesis II brings this within the reach of ordinary mortals. It is
increasingly the case that the really time-consuming part of generating
applications is planning the layout and editing the graphics or
producing animations. An eye for layout and presentational impact is
coming to be as important, if not more so, than technical expertise in
coding.
4.10
Finally...
4.10
Genesis II is definitely a useful tool for serious work of certain types
but, for the hobbyist, it is also immense fun. I hope I have managed to
convey some of the advantages and limitations for those who have not yet
had an opportunity to use the software themselves.
4.10
Hopefully, over the next few months, I will be able to make more
comparisons between Genesis II, Avanti and Magpie. Some of this will
depend on access to the latter two and the time it takes to explore
them.ááA
4.10

4.10
Hardware Column
4.10
Brian Cowan
4.10
First I must apologise, particularly to my regular readers, for my
absence for the last few issues. This time of year is pretty hectic for
the universities, and together with other commitments I was unable to
produce the column.
4.10
Dongle dangers
4.10
My position on dongles is well known (as the politicians say!) Ö
especially to readers of the Hardware Column. However, I have to be
somewhat measured in any public criticism of commercial products. As it
is, my postbag frequently contains letters from aggrieved vendors (not
C.C. I hasten to add).
4.10
Double dongles
4.10
I discovered some time ago that when my computer had both an Impression
dongle and a WorraCad dongle connected, printing of First Word Plus
files became garbled. I spoke to the people at Oak, whose reply was
öimpossibleò. However they told me one potentially useful piece of
information: the dongle must be attached close to the computer because
of critical timing requirements. I ascertained by experiment that this
was not actually as important as all that; the problem remained
unresolved.
4.10
New problems
4.10
My solution, albeit a tedious one, was to disconnect the dongles
whenever they were not in use. However, the problem re-surfaced recently
and I now think I have discovered what is going on. With just an
Impression dongle attached to my Archimedes in my office at work, I
found that First Word Plus documents were being printed with a random
distribution of spurious characters. I gave that up as a bad job and
converted entirely to Impression but my documents were being printed
with a random background of fine dots Ö a sort of black snow. In
desperation, I tried different printer drivers and I even telephoned the
Archive Help Line! With a little detective work, all became clear.
4.10
The solution
4.10
Clearly some of the data going to the printer was becoming corrupted.
These were manifested as characters in First Word Plus and dots in
Impression, because of the different printing methods. I thought that,
perhaps, the printer had a malfunction or a connector was loose. On
removing the dongle, the problem went away, eliminating the above
possibilities but then I could not use Impression! It was time to sit
down and think. (Others might have resorted to prayer!) Then it became
clear. I was using quite a long printer cable; it was over two metres
long. This could be the culprit, especially when combined with the
additional attenuation of one or more dongles Ö and so it turned out to
be. Using a shorter printer cable, all the problems disappeared.
4.10
Conclusion
4.10
The conclusion, then, is simple. The use of dongles reduces the drive
capability of the computeræs printer port. It seems that you then have
to have the printer placed adjacent to the computer for reliable
operation.
4.10
Portable Update
4.10
News of a possible Archimedes Portable has got some people rather
excited. Latest rumours are that the Acorn portables will use an ARM3
processor. This raises the question of precisely who these machines will
be aimed at. An ARM3 machine will not be cheap, so we must be talking
about the business market rather than education. Where does UNIX fit
into all this? Only time will tell. With these new rumblings, I
understand that Mike Harrison has put his A3000-based portable on öholdò
until it becomes clear what the opposition are up to.
4.10
ROM News
4.10
First some observations on the ROMs in the 540 machines. It seemed to me
that some of the modules in the ROMs were different from the standard
RISC-OS release. For a start, the 540 modules were smaller. However,
when I used Basic, it claimed to be the old Basic V version 1.04. Also,
a reader pointed out to me that in a 540, the Basic always seemed to be
RmFasteræed. The explanation for all this is that certain of the modules
are compressed in the ROMs and expanded into RAM when the machine is
booted up. With the extra code required for supporting the ARM3 cache
and the new screen modes space was short in the 512K of ROM available.
4.10
That leads us nicely into the question of the new release of RISC-OS Ö
all two megabytes worth. Here, I must emphasise that I have no concrete
information; if I did have privileged information, I would be sworn to
secrecy and breaking such a trust would have no benefit in the long run.
I am speculating: connecting various rumours, putting two and two
together and making twenty two! One pointer is the fact that the 540
machines have EPROMS; clearly Acorn do not regard it worthwhile to make
new ROMs for the machines containing the old RISC-OS.
4.10
My suspicion is that the new RISC-OS will be released fairly soon,
although I hear it is still rather bugged at present. However, I donæt
think it will be as earth-shattering, as was the original RISC-OS. The
upgraded modules will have some improvements Ö for instance, disk
operations will be multi-tasking. And a newer version of Basic V is
likely, with a few minor improvements. The real question is what will be
in all that extra space in the ROMs. A safe bet is that the ROMs will
contain (updated) versions of Edit, Draw and Paint together with,
possibly, a few fonts. It would then need some sort of ROM filing system
and a ROM filer on the icon bar.
4.10
ROM speedup
4.10
I donæt think that the ROMs in the 540 can run fast enough for the old
speedup trick to work. No one I know with a 540 has managed that. This
is a pity, so I suppose we will have to wait for the real ROMs to appear
rather than the present EPROMs.
4.10
I discovered, when examining the ever-expanding !Boot file on my 410 in
my office, that I had disabled the ROM speedup even on that machine.
Some programs were giving some trouble when running in fast mode and
sometimes the screen would ödisintegrateò. I have since re-enabled the
speedup, but the lesson is to beware and slow down if problems appear.
So far, luckily, I have not lost any data.
4.10
Printed Circuit Boards
4.10
Now for a real Hardware topic: the production of printed circuit boards.
In the past, I have reviewed ARC-PCB from Silicon Vision. They have
brought out a new version which I hope I might review in the future. For
making relatively simple PCBs I have discovered that !Draw is quite
adequate. Having produced the Draw file it can be plotted, on an HPGL
plotter, using WorraPlot. Of course, using a plotter makes it difficult
to fill areas for earth planes etc. But there is a solution...
4.10
Laser printer
4.10
I am now the proud owner (well guardian really) of a Cannon LBP-4 laser
printer driven by Computer Conceptsæ Laser Direct card. It is absolutely
superb Ö but that is another story. I have discovered that it is
possible to print out Draw file PCBs onto tracing film from the laser
printer. The quality is superb and the line density is perfectly
adequate for the UV process which we use. Of course, flood fills may be
done trivially. This has really made life easy for us. For double sided
boards, conventionally the tracks on either side are drawn in different
colours. Using Draw Plus (Careware Disc 13) one can separate the two
colours to produce the masters for each side.
4.10
Schema Graphs
4.10
That brings me to an interesting hint on printing obstinate graphics
files. Using Schema, it is possible to produce nice-looking, although
only rather primitive, graphs. These are generated in Draw format but
when I tried to print them they hung the machine up. After much
thinking, I came up with a solution: drop them into an Impression frame.
The Impression document can then be printed out with ease. I donæt know
if any other readers have had this problem with Schema graphs, but the
solution works a treat.
4.10
If there are any readers using Schema for graphs then you will know that
the macro language can be used to produce much better graphing facili
ties. Has anyone done anything along these lines? Perhaps we could do a
Shareware disc of Schema macros.ááA
4.10

4.10
VoiceBuilder
4.10
Jeremy Mears
4.10
VoiceBuilder, which is not to be confused with Archimedes Voice
Generator, is the second package from MJD Software for creating
Archimedes voices. One drawback with the original AVG package was its
complexity, and presumably in response to this criticism, MJD has
released Voicebuilder, a much simpler, yet surprisingly versatile,
package.
4.10
VoiceBuilder derives its name from the system it adopts for creating
voices. Instead of drawing your own envelopes and waveforms as you would
with SoundSynth, AVG and similar packages, with VoiceBuilder all that
has been done for you, leaving a few vital Éblocksæ which can be
combined to produce a range of sounds.
4.10
Not being able to draw your own waveforms certainly limits the packageæs
usefulness and there are no advanced features such as echo and transpose
to be found on the more sophisticated packages. However, there are bound
to be Archimedes users who have no need for this sophistication and
would prefer the simpler, Élego-likeæ method of VoiceBuilder.
4.10
There are three types of building-block; volume envelopes, waveforms and
pitch envelopes, of which 16 are supplied of each. The volume envelope
plays over the duration of the note, fading the volume in and out, the
waveform affects the actual qualities of the sound (distinguishing a
trumpet from a violin, for example, and the pitch envelope allows the
pitch of the waveform to be scaled up and down while a note is playing.
On top of the 163 (= 4096) permutations of block-built voices that can
be created, there are also options to further alter the volume and pitch
envelopes through the parameters attack, repeat and release. Finally,
there is the parameter, Pitch Span, which exaggerates or reduces the
extent to which the pitch envelope affects the waveform, which is
excellent for creating siren sounds.
4.10
Once you are content with your combination of blocks and parameters, the
waveform can saved as a module or a VB/AVG specific file or played
either by clicking on an icon in the top right of the window or via the
Archimedes keyboard Ö offering limited musical possibilities. In fact,
while writing this review I was running Voicebuilder in the background
to interesting effect, as it responded to key-presses with notes of my
last waveform!
4.10
The manual comes as a text file on the disc giving just the essentials
for you to get started, and the application itself installs on the icon
bar and takes only 200K of application memory. Therefore this package
can easily be run alongside Maestro, for example, and waveforms may
continuously be altered as the music is playing. Given the relative
simplicity of the package, a text file manual is quite adequate and I
was able to master the package in about twenty minutes.
4.10
For serious users wishing to edit samples and have precise control over
the waveform, this package cannot be recommended. However, the low price
of ú19.95 + ú1.50 UK postage, and the packageæs simplicity of use, makes
it ideal for less experienced users who just want something to produce
sound effects to use with Maestro and in their own programs.ááA
4.10

4.10
PipeLine
4.10
Gerald Fitton
4.10
Firstly, some of the matters arising from your correspondence and then a
tutorial showing how to calculate complex numbers in a PipeDream
spreadsheet.
4.10
Science attainment targets
4.10
Malcolm Cowell has brought out version 1.2 of this PipeDream appli
cation. The version I have is a demonstration version which allows the
setting up of an extendable database for recording and reporting pupil
performance against the Science National Curriculum Attainment Targets.
Entries can be made up against each pupil in a tutor group for each of
seventeen Attainment Targets for all ten levels and the various
statements within levels. I can send you a copy of this demonstration
version; the full version is obtainable from Malcolm for about ú3.00.
(Write to him c/o Abacus Training.)
4.10
Dedicated time calculator
4.10
Bob Ames has written to me to let me know that there is a dedicated
portable Time Calculator available that he strongly recommends to anyone
needing to add up (or do other arithmetic calculations) where the values
are measured in Hr Min Sec format (rather than decimals of an hour or
minute). Please write to him at Ayton House, Ramsey Heights, Huntingdon,
Cambs, PE17 1RJ for more details.
4.10
!Help bold expressions
4.10
Stephen Gaynor would like to know the best way of using printer
highlight codes to highlight expression slots. Perhaps the simplest
example is to try to change into bold the slot that contains the sum of
a column of figures. Stephen has a method which, he says, works rather
inelegantly. In the past Iæve tried and failed. My method is even less
elegant. What I have had to do is to use Snapshot to turn the numbers
into text and then embolden the sum as text. Stephen uses two separate
highlight codes, both of which are not turned off at the end of the
slot. The first code turns on bold and the second turns it off. If the
first code (the turn on code) is placed in a slot just before the sum
then its effect continues through the slot containing the sum. The
second code is placed in a slot just after the slot containing the sum.
Has anyone a better method?
4.10
Public transport calculations
4.10
Peter Stoner is a Senior Public Transport Assistant based in Carlisle.
He uses PipeDream as a tool to help him with many aspects of bus route
planning. His disc contains over 200 kbytes and, amongst other interest
ing files, there is an 11 kbyte macro which will reverse a list of
places. Such a list forms part of a timetable for travelling in one
direction. Reverse the list before timetabling in the other direction. I
can see a use for a time difference calculator which, having written out
one set of times, calculates a similar set of times backwards as a
starting point for the reverse route. If you would like a copy of
Peteræs disc or have anything you would like to contribute to his use of
PipeDream this way then send it to me and I will pass it on to him.
4.10
File conversions
4.10
If you have files that you want converting, out them on a disc and send
them to me in the first instance and I will pass them on, probably to
Ian Williamson who has volunteered to coordinate this area of interest.
In the more specialised field of Masterfile to PipeDream conversion,
Betty Mines has written a BASIC program that has been most useful to her
and might be to you. David Holden has sent me an Interword to PipeDream
converter which he describes as being a temporary measure until he
produces a new all formats converter.
4.10
PipeLine in Berlin
4.10
Reinhard G Giesder, Krefelderstr 20, W-1000 Berlin 21 asks if there are
any PipeLine readers in Berlin (or Germany) Ö if you do then he would
like you to write to him.
4.10
Spark
4.10
Let me try to clear up some confusion I might have caused. Spark is a
program which compresses and decompresses files. The compressed program,
application, document, etc, is not corrupted in any way but is coded so
that the information within it takes up less bytes. File compression has
the advantage that more files (or files which are more than 800 kbytes
long such as huge sprites from an A4 scanner) can be squashed onto an
800 kbyte floppy disc. If data is communicated electronically then it is
usually quicker to transfer a compressed file than the original.
4.10
If you have a file which has been compressed using Spark then you need
to expand it back to its original size before trying to use it. David
Pilling, who wrote Spark, has made a PD version of Spark, called
Sparkplug which just contains the expander routines. This is freely
available but he (rightly in my view) charges for the purchase of Spark.
Because SparkPlug has been made freely available, Spark has become the
standard compression format for Archimedes files.
4.10
Norwich Computer Services is a typical user of file compression. NCS has
a copy of the Spark compressor which they use to compress files on many
of the discs they sell. On each of the discs of compressed files they
include a copy of the PD program needed to expand the compressed files Ö
Sparkplug.
4.10
On this monthæs Archive disc you will find a compressed version of
Daniel Dorlingæs bibliography. It is in the directory called DataBase.
Because of its size it has been impossible to include this large
PipeDream application in its uncompressed form. People vary in their
reaction to finding compressed files on discs they have bought. Some
feel they have got more bytes for their money, some donæt like the extra
Éhassleæ of unpacking the files. As an experiment on the July 1991
PipeLine disc I am going to use Spark to compress some of the largest
files. A copy of SparkPlug will be included on the disc. None of the
ReadMe files will be compressed.
4.10
Please write to me and let me know if this use of compression is
acceptable to you and, more generally, how you feel about compressing
PipeDream applications. I have other large databases to which similar
considerations apply.
4.10
Editing macros
4.10
In Pipedream @ is a rather special character. If you need what is called
a Éliteralæ @ (i.e. a real live printed @) then you must press <@>
twice. If you donæt do this, the single @ will tell PipeDream that what
follows is not to be printed literally (i.e. as you see it) but must be
interpreted as a PipeDream command. A typical example is the inclusion
of a graphic by using a command such as @G:MyGraphic,50@. This command
will include the graphic file MyGraphic at 50% of full scale. More
common is a key definition which includes a sequence which starts with
ö@ and ends with @ò.
4.10
The two lines below form part of my Ékeyæ macro (which is automatically
loaded when PipeDream starts up). My default printer font is Trinity and
so I have arranged that pressing the three keys <Ctrl-Shift-F1>
simultaneously invokes the insert font command. By the way, the sequence
\FQ|m in the second line ensures that a blank default document is not
called up as PipeDream is installed.
4.10
\Cdf|i öCtrl-Shift F1ò |i ö@F:Homerton.Bold@ò |m
4.10
\FQ|m
4.10
If you create a macro which includes some command such as the font
ö@<command>@ò above, then, when you load it into PipeDream, you will not
see the command unless you place the cursor in the line containing the
command. For example, you must place the cursor in the line containing
ö@F:Homerton.Bold@ò to see it. Most of you get this far and understand
what is going on. Now hereæs the tricky bit. If you save the macro as it
now appears, the command bracketed by the @ signs, and the @ signs
themselves, disappear! The result is that the macro doesnæt work any
more. If you reload it to find out why, you will see the lines below.
The first of these lines does not change when you put the cursor in that
line because the @ signs have gone!
4.10
\Cdf|i öCtrl-Shift F1ò |i öò |m
4.10
\FQ|m
4.10
If you get to this point where the @ signs are gone, you have to start
again. However, letæs go back to the earlier macro with the @<command>@
present but only visible when the cursor is in that first line. What you
have to do is <ctrl-BSE>, (Block SEarch and replace) to substitute @@
for @ wherever it appears. Do this before you save the macro and it will
still work after saving. What happens is that the double @@ is replaced
by a single @ during the saving process; you start the save with two @
and you finish the save with one @.
4.10
If you are totally confused by this (I hope not), I suggest that you
will have to revert to using Acornæs !Edit to edit macros rather than
PipeDream since @ signs in Edit are always treated literally.
4.10
Complex numbers
4.10
Complex numbers are part of most GCE A level maths courses as well as
being obligatory for BTEC engineering and many other courses. The
paragraphs below might prove of particular interest to those of you
teaching complex numbers and who need to generate interesting and
instructive numerical examples. If you are an educationalist, you will
be interested to know that I have found that getting students to use
actual numbers gives them a much better Éfeelæ for what is going on than
when they manipulate algebraic formulae. ÉHands onæ learning is
particularly effective for the practical engineer, the teaching (or are
they called learning?) objectives are grasped much more quickly. I have
received comments such as öIæve never understood complex numbers beforeò
from mature engineers (with a decade of field work behind them) after
only a couple of hours of entering actual numbers into a spreadsheet
such as an extended version of the spreadsheet Complex01 described
below.
4.10
First an introduction to complex numbers for those of you unfamiliar
with them.
4.10
I have yet to find a hand calculator which will let me find the square
root of Ö4 or the logarithm of Ö1 even though, in the domain of complex
numbers, both of these exist. Perhaps the most famous complex number is
the square root of Ö1. Sqr(Ö1) is represented in two ways. Mathemati
cians use the symbol i and engineers use j (because they use i for
electric current) for the positive square root of Ö1. The other square
root of Ö1 is Öi. I prefer to say that iá*áiá=áÖ1 rather than talk about
i being the square root of Ö1.
4.10
Complex numbers can be considered to have two parts, a Real part and an
Imaginary part. These may be visualised as the x and y coordinates of a
point on a two dimensional sheet of graph paper. A complex number such
as (3á+á4i) is said to have a Real (x) part of 3 and an Imaginary (y)
part of 4 and may be plotted as x and y coordinates on the so called
Argand Diagram (named after its inventor).
4.10
After addition and subtraction, perhaps the simplest thing that can be
done with a complex number is multiplication. For example, the square of
(3á+á4i) is (3á+á4i)(3á+á4i) which becomes 9á+á24i +á16i2. Now, remember
that i2 is really Ö1 and you get 9á+á24iáÖá16 as the answer. This can be
simplified to Ö7á+á24i, a Real part of Ö7 and an Imaginary part of +24.
I think that a better way of looking at complex numbers is as pairs of
Real numbers for which the symbol i is used as a separator and, for
which, iá*áiá=áÖ1.
4.10
As an example this month I shall show you how to raise a complex number
to any power, even a complex power (later, try to find eÖip Ö it
evaluates to Ö1). The spreadsheet application I have called Complex01
has, as input, two complex numbers called z and w and I find zw. The
file Complex01 is on the Archive monthly disc. Figure 1, shown below, is
a screenshot showing the sheet Complex01 being used with zá=ái and wá=á2
to find i2á=áÖ1. The intermediate steps are to find the logarithm of z,
multiply the logarithm by w and then use the exponential function to
find the inverse logarithm. For those of you more familiar with Real
numbers, try out the formulae given in text form in cell A13 of Figure
1, zw=e(w*ln(z)), on your calculator (using a positive Real for z and a
Real for w) and convince yourself that it works. Multiplication (as we
have seen) can be used on complex numbers; the two other very basic
functions are exponentiation (exp) and its inverse, the logarithmic
function (ln Ö not log). The formulae for evaluating these functions as
functions of complex numbers are in the cells of the sheet.
4.10
All these Écleveræ formulae (e.g. for ln and exp) are in the cell block
B11C13. They appear as text in Figure 2. If you want to follow through
this tutorial then either type them in as expressions or load the file
Complex01 from the Archive monthly disc.
4.10
When you have Complex01 spreadsheet, you can show that Real powers of
negative Real numbers work out correctly. Figure 3 is a snapshot of the
spreadsheet correctly evaluating (Ö2)3á=áÖ8. The intermediate results
show that ln(z) has an Imaginary part which, to 4 decimal places, is
3.1416. Do you recognise this number? Try using the spreadsheet to prove
that ln(Ö1)á=ái*p by entering Ö1 into B8 (the Real part of z).
4.10
Figure 4 is a shot that shows that (1á+ái)4á=áÖ4. You can work this out
by using the usual algebraic multiplication formulae (or the binomial
expansion) and replacing i2 with Ö1 whenever it occurs.
4.10
Division of complex numbers is executed by multiplying by a reciprocal.
Division (or finding reciprocals) is a common GCE A level problem which
is solved numerically by using the value wá=áÖ1. Put wá=á0.5 to find the
principal square root; the second root is a bit harder to find but it
can be deduced from the principal root.
4.10
If you have an interest in complex numbers then please write and let me
know what sort of numerical examples you would like to see in spread
sheet format and Iæll see what I can do for you. On the July 1991
PipeLine disc I have included more common functions of complex variables
such as the trigonometrical and hyperbolic functions (and their
inverses) so that you can use them, get numerical results (only the
principal values) and see how the functions are implemented. I have
found that electrical engineers particularly get highly addicted to this
spreadsheet and find it a most worthwhile learning experience.
4.10
I would like to hear from anyone who has done (or wants to do) a complex
numerical integration application (e.g. to find values of the Gamma
function).
4.10
PipeDream V 3.14
4.10
It looks to me as if Version 3.14 of PipeDream is fairly Éstableæ. My
information from Colton Software is that there is no further upgrade
planned at present. So, if you havenæt yet upgraded from an earlier
version then you might as well do it now rather than wait for the next
upgrade. For those of you with a current subscription to PipeLine I have
an official upgrade kit from Colton Software; if you send me your master
disc together with a label and a stamp I will get an upgrade back to you
by return post. For those of you who are not PipeLine subscribers, you
can get an upgrade in the same way from Colton Software direct but it
may not be by return of post.
4.10
In conclusion
4.10
Once or twice a month, I get letters which have been forwarded to me
from Norwich Computer Services. I have no connection with NCS other than
writing this monthly column. Letters should be addressed to me at the
Abacus Training address given on the inside rear cover of Archive.
Incidentally, I have no connection with Colton Software either. Apart
from the help which Colton Software give me with your problems, we
operate completely independently of each other. My Éday jobæ is as a
Lecturer as Swindon College of F.E. where I teach mainly Maths and Stats
(and their applications). To me, at college, the computer is a tool
(which I employ considerably as a student centred teaching resource)
rather than an end in itself. We have nothing as powerful as an
Archimedes there Ö the standard is the 286 PC.
4.10
I created Abacus Training about ten years ago as a way of keeping my
personal accounts separate from anything I might earn Éon the sideæ as a
private tutor. A year ago, when I started selling the quarterly PipeLine
discs, it seemed to me that using Abacus Training for this would keep
the accounts of PipeLine together so that I could keep track of the loss
(or profit) I was making. We are not a corporate body and our turnover
is not sufficient to push us over the VAT threshold.
4.10
I am pleased with the way that PipeLine has developed a sort of User
Group Éfeelæ. I do enjoy reading your letters and trying out the
programs and applications which you send in. I get a kick out of being
able to share the knowledge I have gleaned from you (and my own efforts)
about PipeDream and the Archimedes or when I can help someone overcome
what to them is an insuperable problem. I suspect this secret thrill
rather than the money is why Paul set up Norwich Computer Services in
the first place. Like Paul, I donæt always succeed, but when I do help
somebody it feels good. Iæm sure it is that which motivates me more than
anything else so please keep your letters and discs coming in.ááA
4.10

4.10
Figure 1
4.10

4.10
Figure 2
4.10

4.10
Figure 3
4.10

4.10
Figure 4
4.10

4.10
Archive Mugs for Sale!
4.10
Now that we have got the Archive mugs back from the manufacturers, I can
report that they really are rather attractive. If you imagine the top
couple of inches of the front cover (but without the date, issue number
and price!) in blue and black on a white mug, you will get the picture
of what the new Archive mugs look like.
4.10
I was hoping that someone would write in saying how nice they were so I
could give an unsolicited testimonial but no such luck. All I can do is
offer a money-back guarantee if you are not absolutely satisfied.
4.10
ú3 each (+ ú1 p&p)  or  four for ú10 (+ ú2 p&p)
4.10
(We normally quote prices inclusive of p&p but in this case it is such a
large proportion of the cost, I think itæs better to see it separately.)
4.10
Why not pop into the Archive office and pick up some mugs? Ö It saves
you the postage!
4.10

4.10
RISC-OS Spreadsheet Ö !Calc
4.10
Edward Naish
4.10
After my wife bought her Archimedes and I had learned to use it, I set
about collecting a suite of basic utility programs Ö wordprocessor,
spreadsheet, accounts, database etc. RISC-OS was hot off the press then
and there was not a lot of choice especially in terms of proper multi
tasking applications. I noticed in the Help! section of Archive 3.2 p27
a reference to ö!Calc, a spreadsheet for the Archimedesò. I sent off for
more details and ended up buying it.
4.10
!Calc is a fairly simple and easily understood multi tasking spread
sheet. It installs itself on the icon bar in the usual way and selecting
it brings up two movable windows: the sheet itself and the command
window which takes all the input. Clicking on the sheet moves the cursor
around the 56 columns and 100 rows as you want. Clicking <menu> pops up
a conventional list. The menuæs first label, Éoptionsæ allows altering
cursor movement, justification of text, filing and column order. The
next three labels refer to the palette. You can alter background colour,
text colour and cursor colour using any of fifteen different colours.
These choices can be saved. The original sheet was a very colourful
arrangement of a royal blue background with white text and a red cursor.
I have always found light text on a dark background to be rather tiring,
so a little experimenting soon showed me how to change the Éupsetæ file
in the application so that the colours matched with ÉEditæ. This I find
to be much more restful.
4.10
ÉPrintæ is done using its own built in printer driver, although the use
of the RISC-OS drivers are promised in future. ÉExportæ allows the
export of a complete or partial sheet as an ÉEditæ file. (This enables
you to use the RISC-OS printer drivers if you wish). ÉSaveæ is a
conventional operation, both on complete and partial sheets. Clicking
<menu> on the command window produces a screen full of Help in case you
have forgotten what command you want next.
4.10
!Calc makes use of the < / > symbol to enter commands, hence < /. > with
a number in the range 0-7 gives the number of decimal places in the
current column. </W> sets the column width in the same way. Use < \ > if
the command is to be global. Relative and absolute replication is
supported. Column order can be rearranged as you develop a sheet but row
order is fixed. Setting the justification as you want makes it possible
to change a cell width so you may use the top row or the first column
for long labels or titles.
4.10
The command window has an input slot where all the typing is done.
Underneath is a red box which gives the co-ordinates of the current
cursor position and next to it another slot where the content of the
current cell is displayed. Pressing <Insert> will copy the content slot
to the input slot for editing. The content slot shows the current cell
formula, if there is one, rather than the current value displayed on the
sheet. Double clicking on a cell loads its co-ordinates into the input
slot. Double clicking <Adjust> on a cell wipes it clean. At the bottom
of the window is a Écalculateæ button and a note of the amount of memory
left. <Escape> will toggle the command window on and off so as to give
an uninterrupted view of the sheet when required. It also moves the
input focus from sheet to command window and vice versa as required.
This allows use of the cursor keys to move the sheet cursor and also to
edit the input slot as required. If the input focus is on the sheet and
you wish to enter characters into the input slot, there is no need to
alter the focus, typing the first character does this automatically.
4.10
The first eight function keys are used, some of them being duplicates of
menu items.
4.10
The manual is a very high quality 15 page spiral bound A4 laser printed
document. As a registered user your name and address is printed on the
first page.
4.10
The main weakness of !Calc at the moment is the small number of
functions provided (seven at the moment) but three more are promised
soon. Upgrades come frequently, two in the last twelve months. (V2.18
now). What I value most about it, apart from ease of use, is that if you
have a problem, or a suggestion for a new feature or improvement, a
letter to the author produces an explanation, or the upgrade suggested,
in a very short time. I find it very enjoyable to be directly involved
in the development of a program in this manner. Surely this is only one
step removed from bespoke software. I find it rather puzzling that the
previously quoted reference to !Calc in Archive is the only mention that
I have seen of it anywhere. This is really hiding your lantern under a
bushel. How many more programs are there out there that I want and donæt
know about?
4.10
!Calc is written by Colin Turnbull and is available from him at 13,
Woodhall Terrace, Juniper Green, Edinburgh, EH14 5BR, price ú20.  A
4.10

4.10
Concept Designer
4.10
Diane Hobson
4.10
I presume that anyone interested in this review will already know what a
concept keyboard is but in case you donæt, I will give a brief explana
tion.
4.10
A concept keyboard can be attached to your computer, usually via a user
port (on the Acorn I/O expansion card) or less commonly via the Serial
Port. It is made up of 128 touch sensitive squares, or cells, and can be
used as an alternative input to the normal keyboard. Each cell, or a
group of cells, can be set up to enter, for example, text into a word
processor or to move the cursor or pointer around the screen.
4.10
Its main use is in schools for children whose written vocabulary can be
greatly enhanced enabling them to write words they may otherwise not use
for fear of spelling errors and for the physically handicapped who may
not be able to use an ordinary keyboard.
4.10
The review
4.10
When I offered to review Concept Designer (from Longman Logotron price
ú24 + VAT) all I expected was a concept keyboard design program and the
utility to use it with RISC-OS applications. However, the disc contains
much more than that!
4.10
As well as the expected programs namely !CKDriver and !CKDesign there
are two further utilities, !TouchData (similar to Touch Explorer Plus on
the BBC) and !SoftTouch, a concept keyboard Emulator enabling you to
test or even use overlays without a concept keyboard attached!
4.10
The disc also included a ReadMe file which contained details of an
important feature added since the documentation had been printed;
several example overlays and the relevant sprite files for these; six
Drawfiles to aid overlay design; some highly technical text files for
the use of developers of concept keyboard aware programs.
4.10
The versions under review are: !CKDriver v.1.50, !CKDesign v.1.51,
!TouchData v.1.50    , !SoftTouch v.1.50
4.10
All the applications appear fully RISC-OS compliant. The disc is not
copy protected and installs easily on to a hard disc. (Thankfully, you
do not need the öKey Discò as with Longmans other programs, which I find
the most irritating type of protection.) !CKDriver can be distributed
freely for educational use provided no charge is made. The other
programs may not.
4.10
The manual
4.10
The manual is an A4 booklet which is well written and easy to follow.
There is a contents page which is almost as comprehensive as an index
but there is no separate index. Also included are copies of the example
overlays, although I feel these would have been better supplied as
separate sheets because you either have to photocopy them or cut them
out to use them on the concept keyboard.
4.10
Be sure to read any ReadMe files on your disc as there may be an
addition to the manual, as there was with my version.
4.10
!CKDriver
4.10
When this is installed, any overlay files can be loaded by double-
clicking or dragging to the !CKDriver icon (on the left hand side of the
icon bar). Alternatively just double click on the overlay file and
!CKDriver will load automatically (provided it has been seen). The
amount of memory used is only 32k, so you should have enough memory
available even on a 1M machine. You cannot quit the driver to reclaim
the memory and carry on as if it were loaded.
4.10
The concept keyboard can then be used with any multitasking RISC-OS
program. It does not work at the command line or with a non-multitasking
program. This is a shame Ö but then all programs should be multi-tasking
Ö although it would be useful to be able to use it with the command line
or in BASIC.
4.10
If you wish to change overlays, just drag the new one to the icon bar or
double click on it. This will then be the current overlay. Clicking the
<menu> button over !CKDriver produces eight options:
4.10
Info Ö tells you the version you are using.
4.10
Overlay Ö tells you the current overlay name.
4.10
On/Off Ö allows you to switch concept keyboard input on/off. (This does
not switch off the power to the concept keyboard, just the ability to
use it). The menu option will be ticked if on.
4.10
Keyboard Ö to select the type of concept keyboard you are using i.e.
Parallel, Serial, Concept PC(!) or Alternative. (Alternative is used for
special situations e.g. !SoftTouch although this will set öAlternativeò
automatically).
4.10
Delays Ö to select the timing of keypresses and repeats etc.
4.10
Emulation Ö Keyboard or Mouse (or both).
4.10
Save Settings Ö Once you have set the other options, you can save your
setting so that they will be correct next time you load !CKDriver.
4.10
Quit Ö Remove !CKDriver.
4.10
!CKDesign
4.10
This application only uses 64k of memory.
4.10
Making the overlays for use with !CKDriver is fairly simple. Just double
click on !CKDesign and it will load onto the icon bar (on the right hand
side). When you click on this icon, two windows will open. One is a grid
representing the cells on the concept keyboard and the other shows the
strings or commands that you are using. This will of course be empty at
present.
4.10
It is easier if you decide on and enter the data before choosing the
layout of the overlay on the grid, but it can be done after if you wish.
4.10
Entering the strings
4.10
The data strings can be entered in two ways.
4.10
1) Click <menu> over either window and move the pointer across on the
option Enter. You are given a dialogue box into which you can enter your
text string or command, press <return> and the string will then be shown
in the data window and will be automatically numbered as they are
entered. However, if you have lots of separate strings to enter, this
method can be rather tedious, so it would be better to choose the second
method.
4.10
2) The second method involves using a text editor (e.g. !Edit) or a word
processor. The text file icon (type &FFF only) is just dragged to one of
the !CKDesign windows. When preparing the text file, pressing <return>
twice between strings means !CKDesign will treat them separately and
give them separate numbers.
4.10
Strings can be plain text or include the special top bit characters or
can be *commands or represent a special key such as <return> or
<delete>. These are entered by the key name surrounded by square
brackets i.e. [RETURN] or [DELETE]. Some of the more common ones are
already programmed into the function keys when !CKDesign is loaded and
these can be altered in the !Run file if you wish.
4.10
Do not make the mistake I did and enter [SPACE] as a special key. It can
only be entered by just pressing the space bar although it does look
like a blank numbered entry. You can of course enter spaces at the end
of your text strings, rather than nominate its own cell(s), but I always
feel its better for children to enter the spaces themselves.
4.10
If you need to edit or delete any of your data, this can be done by
clicking <adjust> over the item to be edited. This then activates the
edit and delete options on the menu.
4.10
*Commands can be entered in a string so you can even load an application
from the concept keyboard. You could even set up an overlay to automati
cally load the word processor you wish to use it with.
4.10
You can assign areas to represent mouse or cursor movements or mouse
clicks. The commands for these are given in the manual and example
overlays are included. This together with some *commands to load
programs all on one overlay could enable a disabled person to use their
computer unaided.
4.10
You can allocate more than 128 cells if you wish by using the Shift
option on the menu. If you choose to do this, each cell in the window
will be divided in half, the top half representing the shifted key.
4.10
Also, you can have several layers of overlays. You assign an area on
each of the layers that when pressed will take you to the required
layer. The instructions on how to use and design these are well
documented.
4.10
Once you have completed your overlay you can save it by using the menu
option Save, into which you can enter the path or simply drag the icon
to the directory viewer. The overlays are given their own filetype (C84)
and icon and can be renamed after saving without this being affected.
4.10
Unfortunately, and I feel this is the only criticism I have for this
package, you cannot automatically print out your overlay. This is a
great shame because, after spending time designing it, you should not
then have to spend much more time in creating a draw file to get a
printout. Some draw files are included to help with this, but they are
not very satisfactory as the grids go over the paper limits and this
should not be necessary. For now, I think I will stick to entering the
data by hand on a blank photocopy. No blanks are provided incidentally.
4.10
Editing
4.10
If you wish to edit a previously saved overlay this is done by just
dragging the file to the !CKDesign icon on the icon bar. The windows
will open and can be edited using the same features as you did when
designing. Only one overlay can be loaded at a time so you cannot
transfer data between overlays. If you have an unsaved overlay loaded
you will be warned before it is replaced.
4.10
!SoftTouch
4.10
This provides emulation of the concept keyboard and uses only 32k of
memory. You do not even have to have a concept keyboard attached! It
loads to the icon bar and when you click on its icon a window opens
showing a grid representing the concept keyboard cells. The öcellsò can
then be clicked on with the mouse pointer to produce the input that the
real concept keyboard would if you pressed the same cell.
4.10
When an overlay is loaded into !CKDriver and !SoftTouch is loaded, it
will automatically take over from the real concept keyboard. You can
change this by selecting parallel again in the !CKDriver menu. Even when
an overlay is loaded, the !SoftTouch grid will be blank, although a
sprite can be loaded onto it to represent the input. An example of this
is included.
4.10
The grid can be shown in different colours and four different sizes.
These can be chosen from the menu. If you prefer not to use the mouse,
the grid cell number can be entered instead (from the menu option Key).
Shift Lock can also be chosen from the menu if your overlay requires.
4.10
!SoftTouch is a good idea and very useful for testing out overlays.
However I do wish the cell representation was shown automatically as
designing a sprite overlay takes (me anyway) much longer to make than
the overlay file.
4.10
!TouchData
4.10
This application is similar to Touch Explorer Plus on the BBC and uses
just 32k of memory. Any overlay files can be used and when the cell is
touched, a window opens displaying the contents.
4.10
A picture overlay can be used (an example is provided) and when a part
of the picture is touched the corresponding text displayed on screen or
a text overlay used and !TouchData could display the picture. An example
is provided where several layers are used and one shows a picture of a
musical instrument and another gives full information about it.
4.10
The menu gives you six options relating to the display. You can change
the size, font, where the window appears on screen, foreground and
background colours.
4.10
The design of your overlays really depends on the extent of your
imagination. A section in the manual öAdvanced Overlay Designò deals
with many ideas. I know that on the BBC Touch Explorer Plus, files have
been designed for many topics and used as software teaching aids in
their own right. This utility should enable the same to happen for the
Archimedes.
4.10
Whether !TouchData is as comprehensive as Touch Explorer Plus, I am
unable to say as I am not familiar with Touch Explorer Plus, but I know
you can print out the overlay!
4.10
Conclusion
4.10
This package is extremely good value. It contains all the applications
someone with a concept keyboard could want and, because of !SoftTouch,
even someone who has not! All the programs are easy to use.
4.10
The main omission I feel is not being able to print out the finished
overlay automatically. If this facility could be added it would be a
great bonus.
4.10
The overlays I had been using previously, provided by the very few
programs that could be used with a concept keyboard (mainly !Stylus),
are not compatible with this package and the !CKDesign overlays are not
compatible with !Stylus (in fact when I tried to use one it crashed the
machine). So you will have to re-design any overlays you may have been
using before. However, I feel this is worth it for the greater compat
ibility this package offers.
4.10
All in all I can recommend Concept Designer.ááA
4.10

4.10
LOGO and Algebra
4.10
Alan Angus
4.10
The language Logo is widely used in school mathematics and, almost
always, it is used for geometrical work using turtle graphics. This is
good in itself but turtle graphics represents only a tiny part of the
potential of Logo.
4.10
I am interested in using computers to explore elementary algebra, and
list processing languages such as LISP, Logo and EdScheme are well
suited to this. Over the last year I have been teaching myself Logo
programming using Brian Harveyæs excellent three volume work, Computer
Science Logo Style published by the MIT Press. Anyone seriously
interested in programming with Logo and similar languages should get
hold of this.
4.10
Using routines taken from Harvey I have developed some simple workspaces
(listed at the end of the article). The one I am going to discuss here
is about number sequences. The variables öS1 and òS2 contain lists of
numbers and when the routine SEQ is initiated, the user is presented
with a display like this;
4.10
ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ
4.10
 Try to write a formula for the
4.10
 sequence in terms of N, where N is
4.10
 the integer giving the position of
4.10
 the number in the sequence.
4.10

4.10
 An example of a formula is
4.10
     2 * N * N + 3
4.10
 (* is the multiplication sign)
4.10

4.10
 You can have a two more attempts if
4.10
 you get the formula wrong the first
4.10
 time.
4.10

4.10
 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
4.10
ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ
4.10
In this case, the formula is obviously N+1. When the formula is typed
in, the routine SEQ_SUB tests it by forming a sequence of numbers called
INSEQ by mapping the formula FORM over the integers 1 to 10 stored in
variable I. If the sequence is correct then FORMTEST outputs öGOODò,
otherwise it returns öBADò. The output of FORMTEST is used by SEQ to
control what happens next, e.g. moving on to the next number sequence or
giving the user another go at the present sequence.
4.10
All the clever work is done by the routines MAP, STUFF etc. that are
taken from Harvey volume 1. Get hold of a copy and look this up, then
try experimenting for youself with the real power of Logo.
4.10
The routines are in the workspace SEQ and once this is loaded, you start
up by typing SEQ :S1 to use the first list of number sequences, or SEQ
:S2 for the other list.
4.10
I originally implemented SEQ in APL, and this was quite easy as the
mapping of functions over lists of numbers is built in to that language.
However, when I demonstrated the program to other maths teachers, they
were not too keen on using it because of APLæs önon standardò rules of
precedence. For example, with 2*N+1, the addition would be done first
because of APLæs öright to leftò rule. In Logo, the precedence order
used is the same as that normally taught in the mathematics classroom.
4.10
If your use of Logo has been limited to simple turtle graphics, you
should get hold of a good book and learn a little bit about list
processing. It can be hard going at first, especially if you are
unfamiliar with recursion, but before long you will find yourself toying
with ideas that are far from BASIC.
4.10
Fairly recently, the EdScheme version of Scheme has become available to
Archimedes users. I have started to experiment with this and, in many
ways, it is superior to Logo, having many powerful functions built in to
the language and a much better way of grouping together subroutines and
controlling local variables. If you donæt have Logo already, this new
language is probably a better buy and it certainly is if you are a
student aiming at studying computer science at a reasonably high level.
4.10

4.10
TO MAP :TEMPLATE :INPUTS
4.10
IF WORD? :INPUTS [OP MAP.WORD :TEMPLATE :INPUTS]
4.10
OP MAP.LIST :TEMPLATE :INPUTS
4.10
END
4.10

4.10
TO STUFF :THING :TEMPLATE
4.10
; from Harvey vol.1 Using N instead of ? in templates
4.10
IF EMPTY? :TEMPLATE [OP []]
4.10
IF EQUAL? FIRST :TEMPLATE öN [OP FPUT :THING STUFF :THING BF :TEMPLATE]
4.10
IF WORD? FIRST :TEMPLATE [OP FPUT FIRST :TEMPLATE STUFF :THING BF
:TEMPLATE]
4.10
OP FPUT (STUFF :THING FIRST :TEMPLATE) (STUFF :THING BF :TEMPLATE)
4.10
END
4.10

4.10
TO FORMTEST :TS
4.10
IF EQUAL? :TS (FIRST :SEQUENCES) [OP öGOOD] [OP òBAD]
4.10
END
4.10

4.10
TO SEQ_SUB
4.10
PR [The sequence is]
4.10
PR FIRST :SEQUENCES
4.10
PR []
4.10
MAKE öFORM RL
4.10
MAKE öINSEQ MAP :FORM :I
4.10
PR :INSEQ
4.10
PR []
4.10
IF EQUAL? (FORMTEST :INSEQ) öGOOD [PR [Good]]
4.10
END
4.10

4.10
TO SEQ :SEQUENCES
4.10
; some sequences stored in öS1, òS2
4.10
IF EMPTY? :SEQUENCES [(PR öFinished) STOP]
4.10
PR [] PR []
4.10
PR [Try to write a formula for the sequence in terms of N,]
4.10
PR [where N is the integer giving the position of the number]
4.10
PR [in the sequence.]
4.10
PR [An example of a formula is 2 * N * N + 3]
4.10
PR [(* is the multiplication sign)]
4.10
PR [You can have a two more attempts if you get the formula]
4.10
PR [wrong the first time.]
4.10
PR [] PR []
4.10
SEQ_SUB
4.10
IF EQUAL? (FORMTEST :INSEQ) öBAD [PR [Have another go] SEQ_SUB]
4.10
IF EQUAL? (FORMTEST :INSEQ) öBAD [PR [Last chance!] SEQ_SUB]
4.10
IF EQUAL? (FORMTEST :INSEQ) öBAD [PR [That one was too hard for you,
4.10
 note it down and think about it]]
4.10
SEQ BF :SEQUENCES
4.10
END
4.10

4.10
TO MAP.WORD :TEMPLATE :INPUTS
4.10
IF EMPTY? :INPUTS [OP ö]
4.10
OP WORD (RUN STUFF QUOTED FIRST :INPUTS :TEMPLATE) (MAP.WORD :TEMPLATE
4.10
 BF :INPUTS)
4.10
END
4.10

4.10
TO MAP.LIST :TEMPLATE :INPUTS
4.10
IF EMPTY? :INPUTS [OP []]
4.10
OP FPUT (RUN STUFF QUOTED FIRST :INPUTS :TEMPLATE) (MAP.LIST :TEMPLATE
4.10
 BF :INPUTS)
4.10
END
4.10

4.10
TO QUOTED :THING
4.10
IF LIST? :THING [OP :THING]
4.10
OP WORD öò :THING
4.10
END
4.10

4.10
MAKE öS2 [[0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18] [1 4 9 16 25 36 49 64 81 100]
4.10
 [Ö1 1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17]]
4.10
MAKE öI [1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10]
4.10
MAKE öS1 [[1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10] [2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11]
4.10
 [2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20] [Ö4 Ö3 Ö2 Ö1 0 1 2 3 4 5]]
4.10
MAKE öFORM [N Ö 4]ááA
4.10

4.10
Matters Arising
4.10
Å    Acorn SCSI podule problems Ö One reader (well, it was Ian Lynch,
actually) who uses a removable drive on an A540 reckoned we had over-
stated the complaints about the Syquest (MR45æs) drives önot working
with the new Acorn SCSI cards as used on A540æsò. They do work most of
the time. Itæs just that if you are copying lots of files it hangs up,
sometimes, in the middle of the copying procedure. Acorn are still
working on a solution to the problem. In the meantime, a reader has
written a patch which he is selling for ú20 which solves the problems
but it comes as a machine code routine with (surprise, surprise) no
source code and a strict prohibition against trying to disassemble the
code. This is available through N.C.S. for ú23.50 inc VAT.
4.10
If you have problems on an Acorn SCSI card with not being able to get
the cartridge out of a removable drive, try using a *RMREINIT  SCSIFS.
4.10
Å    Hard Drive problems Ö Following on from Tord Erikssonæs öSilent
Computingò article last month, Oak Computers say that you must NOT fit a
thermostatic switch on the fan and you most certainly WILL invalidate
your warranty (as Ed suggested!) if you do so. They are not just being
awkward, there is a logical reason. Let me explain. Obviously, if a
drive gets up to 70░C or more then it is quite likely to cause cause
damage but that is not the main problem. The real danger is that if the
fan is not used, the drive may heat up too quickly. Apparently, itæs the
rate of rise of temperature that is critical because it causes differen
tial expansion and this can cause a head crash. So please do not start
disconnecting your fans Ö silence is golden, maybe, but in this case it
could also be very expensive. This was also discovered, the hard way, by
another Archive reader so itæs not just suppliers being over-sensitive.
His drive was U/S as a result, so you have been warned.ááA
4.10

4.10
Public Key Cryptography
4.10
Colin Singleton
4.10
Sometime in the late seventies I was intrigued by an article in, I
think, Scientific American, describing a new Éunbreakable codeæ. We have
all seen Ésecret codesæ for sending messages, most of which can be
cracked very quickly with ingenuity and intelligent guesswork. This one
was different. It could not be cracked, they said. Furthermore, it did
not rely on secret methods or parameters agreed in advance, which could
be intercepted by enemy intelligence. The method, and the parameters
necessary to encode a message (or encrypt it, in the preferred jargon)
can be public knowledge! Indeed they must be, for the system to work.
4.10
The method was discovered in 1977 by Rivest, Shamir and Adleman and is
known by the letters RSA. At that time the technique was regarded by
most as little more than an interesting novelty, since you would have
needed a computer the size of a removal van to carry out the necessary
encryption and decryption! Now, however, it is well within the scope of
Archimedes.
4.10
Enter George Foot and Roger Sewell. In January this year, they published
a magazine called The Public Key, reviewed in Archive 4.5 by Brian
Cowan. Issue N║ 2 of this occasional series is now available, as
reported in Archive last month. For those who already have N║ 1, the new
issue costs ú1.50 (EC ú2.50, Rest of the World ú3.50). For newcomers,
both issues plus the software on disc are available for ú5.00 (EC ú6,
Rest ú7). These charges are to cover costs (which they do not quite do)
Ö this is not a commercial venture. Please send cheques to George at
ÉWaterfallæ, Uvedale Road, Oxted, Surrey RH8 0EW.
4.10
What fascinated me originally was the mathematical simplicity of the
technique. Each person wishing to use the facility must calculate for
himself three parameters, which I will call M (modulus), E (encryption
key) and D (decryption key). If the text of the message (or part of it)
is represented numerically as T, then the corresponding cryptic text, C,
is calculated, using the published M and E parameters for the intended
recipient, by
4.10
C = T^E MOD(M)
4.10
The recipient derives the original text by
4.10
T = C^D MOD(M)
4.10
Of course, the values M, E and D must satisfy a certain mathematical
relationship for this to work. This is not secret, and is explained,
briefly, in The Public Key N║ 1. I hope Roger will explain in a future
issue the technique by which suitable trios of values are obtained. For
the moment, suffice to say that the software will generate suitable
numbers for you.
4.10
The parameters M and E for each person are published (in the magazine,
and on the disc) so that anyone can encrypt a message to send to anyone
on the list. Each person must keep his decryption key secret, since only
with this can a message encrypted using his M and E be decrypted.
4.10
The beauty of the system is that although each personæs M and E
parameters are published, and D is linked to them mathematically, it is
not possible (or rather not practical) to calculate D from M and E. This
works because M is the product of two large prime numbers, each
typically around 1077. Finding the prime factors, given only the
product, is fiendishly difficult. The Public Key (N║ 2) reports the
latest estimate that a network of 2,000 processors, specially designed
for this purpose, and costing $50,000 each, could crack one key per year
(between them, not each)! I have used the software to send and receive
messages and, to my delight, it worked first time! That in spite of the
fact that I decided to be clever and use the Édigital signatureæ
feature. This double-encryption technique relies on the fact that the
keys E and D are interchangeable. Used correctly, the process enables
the recipient of a message to be absolutely certain that the sender of a
message is indeed who he claims to be. Signature authentification is of
vital importance in the prevention of fraud in private and business
transactions alike.
4.10
How does the program find a guaranteed prime number of the order of
1077? There is a tantalising insight into this in The Public Key N║ 2. I
have analysed the technique from the program coding, and found it most
interesting. This aspect will, I have no doubt, be covered in a later
issue.
4.10
Software to provide these facilities needs to process rather large
numbers (up to 10154). So, as an added bonus, the program contains a
comprehensive multi-length arithmetic package. The functions available
are explained in detail in The Public Key N║ 2, in the form of commands
which can be used in Écalculatoræ mode. The coding requirements to use
them in other programs, however, are not given. This is the carrot to
entice us to order issue N║ 3. I have already done so.
4.10
Issue N║ 2 also contains an interesting article on the time taken for
encryption related to the size of the data blocks, which in turn relates
to the degree of security. I got a little bogged down with the O()
function, though I suppose I must have Édoneæ it at school at some time.
My interpretation of it as proportional to earned a rebuke from Roger
Sewell, but for most of us this conveys the right general concept.
4.10
What The Public Key needs is support, principally in the form of comment
and discussion on the techniques and scope of Public Key Cryptography.
Even if you foresee no need for the ultimate data security offered by
this encryption technique, perhaps you would be interested in its
capabilities. Also, even though the calculations appear so simple, the
study of the mathematical background is fascinating.
4.10
Send your cheque off to George right away!ááA
4.10

4.10
Prism versus Other Art Packages
4.10
Victor Russell
4.10
(We have had criticisms that some of our reviews have been too superfi
cial but we have to balance that against the need to make best use of
the number of pages available. This is a rather longer review than usual
but I thought I would publish it as it is and see what people thought.)
4.10
I am sure that we all agree that programs for our favourite micro should
be properly RISC-OS, the action taking place in resizeable windows Ö no
nasty Mac/Windows menus across the top, etc, etc. Fair enough, but what
about art programs? Should they be a special case, officially exempt so
to speak, from standard RISC-OS menu requirements? The point is that,
whereas with a WP program you only occasionally have to access menus to
change styles, with painting programs you do it all the time, especially
when choosing colour. So one can reasonably argue that full-blooded
RISC-OS is unreasonable.
4.10
Here is a thought as an alternative to sheep-counting some sleepless
night: if you were designing a painting program, how would you organise
the various menus? I have been looking at four programs with a view to
buying for my school and it is interesting to see how each goes about
its basic design. Only Revelation works in RISC-OS windows: the other
three take over the entire screen. They install on the icon bar and can
be exited temporarily to allow work with other programs. You press
<menu> to get menus as expected and, when drawing, no menus are on
screen. With Atelier, you just move off to remove current menu, with
Artisan2 you move off and start to draw, with Prism it depends on the
type of menu.
4.10
Atelier works in mode 15 (256 colours). When you have a menu (in words)
you press <select> to choose or to move up and down the menu tree. If
you press <menu> again when you are on one of these menus you get the
colour choice box so that it is never more than two mouse presses away.
Sub-options (flags) are clicked off and on from the colour or certain
other boxes. Confusingly, the same flag can have different effects with
different tools: this is one of Atelieræs weak features, at any rate for
beginners.
4.10
Artisan2 is a 16-colour (mode 12) program. (I meant to get Pro-Artisan
but ordered the wrong Artisan by mistake, and have been too lazy to get
the right one yet.) It is entirely icon driven, in what one might call
the classic way. There is a master menu and just one level below that
which makes moving around easier than with Atelier. The colour box icon
is on every sub-menu, so again it is easily accessible. Sub-options, if
they exist, are obtained by pressing <adjust> rather than <select> on
the appropriate icon. This makes the program very easy to use but it is
fair to remark that although it is a capable program, it is less
powerful than Atelier.
4.10
Revelation is quite different. For a start, it works in any screen mode
and in one of two ways, RISC-OS or öSpecialò. The latter is a sort of
super-RISC-OS in that you can persuade most menus to stay on screen by
tearing them off the master menu. This includes the colour box. If you
are happy working with a less than screen size drawing window then life
is very easy, but these menu windows are a bit of a nuisance if you are
working on the whole screen. When you choose a particular tool, its sub-
options drop down. This is probably a good idea, although it can be
irritating if you are used to a program like Atelier in which a
particular painting style can be applied with any tool.
4.10
Prism
4.10
What about Prism, the subject of this review? Like Atelier, it only
works in a full mode 15 screen. When you press <menu> (or first click on
the icon-bar icon), you get a standard mouse pointer and an elegantly
mounted menu at the top, with nine choices in writing, namely Prefs,
Brush, Drawing, Options, Screen, Prism, Lines, Curves and Desk. As you
slide along the menu, sub-menus drop down and if you slide down the sub-
menus, those with a further sub-menu, shown by an arrow, open up. (Is
the author a Mac fan? You can even set a Pref to make it yet more Mac-
ish.) You click on your chosen one, and all menus disappear (or a fancy
editing box appears). To make a further choice, you have to press <menu>
again to call up the menu, slide across and down and choose again. This
can all be an infuriating process!
4.10
The colour choice box is accessed from one of the sub-menus: it has no
special status. It can also be called up by pressing F1. F-keys with
Shift, Ctrl, Alt or on their own mostly have actions mapped onto them.
So has the Print key (but it is not for printing!). This makes for a
much too complicated key strip. If I do buy this program for general
school use, I shall certainly not issue key-strips, but merely explain
the functions of <F1> and <Print>. There is no on-screen help, no change
of pointer, no status display of any kind. (Atelier and Artisan have
help windows, and Revelation at least shows current colour, tool and
sub-option(s).) You can call one up, but not all that easily, and anyway
it is far too complicated, showing the condition of irrelevant flags and
dormant options as well as current ones.
4.10
It is a notable feature of Prism that it never attempts to anticipate
your next action. Say that you are drawing in a red using circular
pencil and go into the brush menu and select a particular brush
(sprite). When you start drawing again you are still drawing red
circles: you have to actually choose to use the brush. Or suppose you
want to restrict drawing to a window within the screen and you find the
Window sub-menu and choose Define. That is easy enough Ö you just click
on one corner and widen out the window rectangle as you would expect.
One more click and all visual reference to a window has gone. Alas,
drawing occurs anywhere on screen Ö it appears that your attempt at
defining a window has been unsuccessful. What you should have done was
to go back into the Window menu and choose Turn On. There is still no
visual difference but now attempts to draw do only occur within the
window. When you have grown used to it, you realise that this is not a
bad idea: you always know where you are. In contrast, Atelier at times
attempts to anticipate your thoughts: for instance, if you set the style
of the fancy Range Fill that you want, it automatically selects Range
Fill as your next action, which is probably but not necessarily what you
want to do.
4.10
Options for any particular kind of action are for it alone, as in
Artisan and Revelation, a better scheme than Atelieræs.
4.10
Documentation
4.10
The manual is OK, with the expected tutorial and reference section, but
it is printed rather poorly. You do get an audio tape for training
beginners, and even a video Ö which I have not seen Ö if you buy a site
licence. If you were feeling unkind you might say that more on-screen
help would be better! The tape would probably be quite helpful for a
complete beginner: I found it boring, but I think that was my fault.
4.10
Colours
4.10
All art programs have specialities unless they are free. Revelationæs is
its sophisticated colour processing of images and Atelieræs its ability
to wrap images round Ébottlesæ and other 3-D surfaces. (I do not myself
particularly like either of these, the former because I have not found
it all that useful, the latter because like a few other of the programæs
features it is so painfully slow.) Prismæs best claim to fame is
probably its selection of colours.
4.10
When you first call up Choose Paint, a sub-menu of Drawing, you get 512
(no, I have not worked out why!) solid colours in one rectangle, current
colour in another quite large window, and nine choices Ö Colour, Dither,
Artist, Shades, Pattern, Cycles, Tinter, Brush and CLS, plus an arrow
that allows the menu to be flipped to bottom or back to the top of the
screen, to allow colours under it to be sampled. <Select> produces the
colour-choice window for each of the eight Écoloursæ, <adjust> an edit
mode.
4.10
When you are in choice mode, as you roam around the colours, you see the
colour under the pointer displayed in the large window at the side of
the colours rectangle. You just press <select> on the colour you want.
As you continue to move, the colour in this window continues to change,
but when you move onto the menu surround it solidifies to your chosen
colour. You pick a colour off the screen in the same way. This is an
excellent feature, for you can see for certain what the colour is, even
if it is just a thin line or part of a dither. (To pick a colour off
screen in Revelation you have to select and use a special tool, in
Atelier an F-key, but only when no menu is on view: both of these
methods are rather fiddly.) This does take a little while to get used
to: at first I tended to choose a colour from the menu, go down off the
menu and try to draw: nothing happened, for in fact I was just re-
selecting a colour off the screen, black in this case! When you have
chosen your colour you have to press <menu> to get rid of the colour
menu before you do anything else.
4.10
Dither gives you a choice of 512 dithers (two colours in a chequerboard
pattern) and Shades likewise, but with Shades, each solid colour is
dithered with 16 shades of grey. Cycles gives you a choice of 64 cycles,
usually of one colour dithered with grey shades. This is for use with
sprays etc, not range fills which use their own cycles. Artist is an
interesting idea: you build up a selection of 512 colours, chosen in
various ways, that particularly suit the current picture. You might
build up a selection of flesh tones for instance. Patterns presents you
with 32 patterns, 16 of them begging to be edited. Tinter presents the
256 colours (not 512 this time!) and, when used, it just deposits the
colour on half of the screen pixels (always the same half of course).
4.10
Pressing <adjust> on any of the first seven choices (not Tinter or
Brush) produces a different, editing menu. The Dither and Shade editors
are great fun! You roam around a vast chequerboard of dithered colours
and press <select> on your chosen rectangle of 512. Your selection is
referenced by co-ordinates so that you can choose the same ones some
other day if you want. (You can use dithers in the other programs of
course, but you have to make them up yourself as patterns or sprites:
this is not nearly so good as Prismæs ready-made method.) The Colour
edit menu allows changing of any one or more colours on screen for any
other set and is very easy to operate. The Cycles editor is also easy to
use: you can choose any one colour and have it automatically dithered
with grey shades or you can manually build up a cycle from any of the
other menus. The Artist editor allows you to build up a set of colours
in various ways.
4.10
Editing patterns
4.10
The Pattern editor is a joy to use Ö Prism at its stylish best. It takes
up about three-quarters of the screen area, symmetrically placed, and
divided into five windows with six action buttons in writing. The
separate windows are all framed in Prismæs typical soft rounded style
(buff at centre, shading to black at the edge giving a raised effect).
The top window shows all 32 patterns, each two Éunitsæ wide, where a
unit is 16 pixels by 16. The bottom window shows the colours (512
again!) and the last three are across the middle. The left one shows a
large tessellation of the current pattern, the right hand one shows the
current colour and the middle one is the editing window, 16 by 16 small
outlined squares. You can choose a colour from this window with <adjust>
as well as from the main colour rectangle. The six action buttons are
Flipx, Flipy, Mirror, Repeat, Wipe and Grab.
4.10
Mirror mirrors the top left quarter both ways to create a doubly
symmetrical pattern and Repeat translates the top left into the other
three quarters, Grab shows the current screen with a fair-sized window
on top-left or bottom-left Ö move around the screen, with the area under
the cursor showing under the window, and press <select> when you have
something you like. Some quite young children happened to be in one day
when I was using this editor and loved it! They found it exciting that
they could create patterns so easily, see them proper size as they were
created, and then just press <menu> to get back to the usual colour
menu, and finally CLS to clear whole screen to their pattern. One press
of <adjust> and they were back in the editor ready to create more
patterns. You can create patterns in the other programs that I have been
looking at but they are not nearly as pleasant to use or as efficient.
4.10
Drawing
4.10
Having chosen a colour Ö which remember can be any one of a pattern, a
dither, a solid colour etc Ö we want to use it. Main menu offers three
choices that lead to painting tools, Drawing, Lines and Curves. Lines
and Curves are easy to use; your chosen one is a Shape. They can be
Single (straight) Line, Rubber (straight) lines, Square, Rectangle,
Parallelogram, Polygon (which offers a further choice between Circular,
Elliptical and Define), Single Curve, Rubber Curve, Circle, Ellipse,
Arc, Sector and Segment.
4.10
Pressing <select> on Shape Details produces one of Prismæs fancy editing
windows, with four buttons and a window with a dot in it. Pressing the
first button toggles between Line and Fill, the second between Move and
Fix. If you choose Fix then one point of the shape is fixed: you can
draw concentric circles etc. The other two buttons are for enlarging or
decreasing the dot in the window: it becomes a larger or smaller circle
which sets the size of the outline of the shape if it is Line rather
than Fill. None of the other programs offers this shape drawing with
lines of variable thickness. Shape Repeat allows drawing with the last
shape you selected, which can be a very useful feature at times. It
applies even if the last shape you drew was a line segment (and even if
you drew with shapes some time ago: there is always a current shape
defined, even if it is dormant).
4.10
The remaining options are fairly obvious. Rubber Curve draws É3-point
curvesæ: click on two end points and then pull out the line anywhere
between them to create a curve. Absence of curve drawing like this is a
notable omission from Revelation and Artisan2. Atelier does have this
feature but with one small but irritating difference from Prism Ö when
you have drawn your curve segment the cursor is left free, whereas the
second end point of the curve becomes the first of a new curve in Prism,
i.e. you can draw a continuous twisting line fairly accurately.
4.10
The Drawing menus are more complicated: on offer are Choose paint, Paint
fill, Range fill, Pencil, Spray brush, and Pixel editing. Pixel editing
does what it says, rather stylishly (for brush or screen). (Atelieræs is
similar, but shows less of the screen at once and lacks Prismæs Undo and
Fill. Revelation has no pixel editing per se: instead, you can just have
another view in a different RISC-OS window, at a different magnifi
cation. This sounds better, for you can use all tools in either window
but pixel editors are nice to use, with scrolling automatic in the
second window: it is a nuisance in Revelation that you often have to
scroll manually to make the windows match.) Pencil and Spray brush have
similar sub-choices.
4.10
Spray brush offers Points, Squares, Circles, Shape, Brush, Mask, Spray
size and Point size. Point size alters the size of Circles and Squares Ö
nice that you can spray more than just dots. Spray size alters the size
of the circular outline. The rest are the things you actually spray.
Mask is the solid shape of the outline of the current brush (i.e.
excluding any bits you have masked out). They all work in the current
colour except Brush. When you spray with a Brush, you actually spray
complete brushes, an eccentric idea. If, on the other hand, current
colour happens to be Brush and you spray say circles, you will just
spray part of the brush onto the screen. Sorry if this confuses you!
Logically, you should be able to spray or use pencil with Mask using
Brush as colour, but itæs one of several bugs that this will not work:
colour reverts to last chosen solid colour.
4.10
Range fills are to my mind an important feature of computer art
packages, and both Atelier and Prism offer a vast array of them. Prism
has fills at an angle and rather finer control over the amount of
dithering between colours but it lacks one of Atelieræs excellent
features, Radial fills. (Artisan2 calls these Écircle fillsæ.) Both have
rather weird editing boxes, Prismæs being marginally worse. One button
cycles through Line Graded, User Graded, Auto Graded and Auto Shaped: I
herewith bet my life savings that you cannot work out in advance what
these all mean! Revelation has no range fills of any kind, a serious
omission.
4.10
Brushes
4.10
Prism calls sprites Ébrushesæ, α la !Paint. (Atelier calls them sprites,
and Revelation calls them motifs, which have a dual existence as
patterns.) Brush is one of the main menu options, with sub-menus Select
(choose between different brushes in memory, each shown full size as you
cycle through them), Pick up (obvious), Transparency, Drawing, Rotate,
Brush, Mask, EffectsX, EffectsY. Transparency is handled very well: you
just click on the colours you want to mask out and click on Create. You
can even Invert, masking out the colours that you have not clicked on.
Also, you can undo masked-out colours. This is one of Prismæs best
features. It is much less easy in Atelier, and you cannot do it in
Revelation. Drawing allows choice between Single and Multiple. Using
Multiple, the brush (or its transformation) is drawn continuously to
screen when you press <select>. Atelier calls this Sprite Blit, but fast
drawing only occurs with the basic sprite: rotations in particular are
painfully slow and none of the Atelier transformations can be repeated.
Revelationæs can, but there are no really fancy ones, just rotations and
enlargements and combinations thereof.
4.10
The rest of the options are to do with selection of a transformation
(distortion) of the brush. (Mask uses current colour within the brush
outline, suitably transformed.) Brush and Mask allow various rectangular
enlargements. The Effects are very striking. You can choose from Shear,
C bend, S bend1, Sbend2 and Distort. The S bends are particularly
unusual: you bend the rectangular brush outline into an S bend. Then you
can draw as many of these as you want, as with all the transformations Ö
and these are drawn really fast. It makes a sprite look as if it is
drawn on a scroll. Distort (not mentioned in the manual) squashes the
brush into any enclosed space (called Copy Fill in Atelier, not
available in Revelation). Sadly, the transparency mask is not respected
in Distort, nor in Rotations, and neither is it anywhere within the
program when Brush is used as the current colour.
4.10
Other main menu items
4.10
Prefs allows mostly rather frivolous changes: you can choose how menus
open for instance!
4.10
The Options allow Co-ordinates to be displayed (like Atelier, but
without the help), Mouse lock, Grid lock, Clock (a periodic alarm to
remind you to save), Window (to restrict drawing to a window), Colour
Logic (EOR etc), and Undo action. To undo in Revelation you have to call
up and select from a menu, which is a nuisance, and it does not always
seem to work. In Atelier you press an F-key: this restores the screen to
just after the last menu was called up (i.e. a menu press fixes the
screen.) For my money, Prism and Artisan2 have the best method: you just
press <adjust> to undo the last action: this is the sole function of
that mouse button within the main drawing screen, and it works with all
operations. Prism also allows you to change from the default Single undo
to Multiple: now <adjust> returns you to the screen that was last Fixed,
which is done from the next main menu option or by pressing Print. (Why
Print I wonder?).
4.10
Screen offers Fix screen, various Area transformations (a subset of the
Brush ones) and Colour Cycle. The latter is the most mysterious of
Prismæs functions. Its sub-menu offers various ways of doing this colour
change. The manual says that it changes each colour of the colour cycle
to the one above but why you should want to do that I cannot think.
Anyway, what it does is amazing, if not very useful. Try it if you have
a chance to use Prism at an exhibition. You can create rather unsettling
pictures, or transform existing ones, very quickly. They tend to look
rather like organic Mandlebrot sets, or perhaps dissected Martians.
4.10
Prism offers Colour fixing, Sketch pad, Text, Magic colour, Page
details, Free memory, Prism status, Prism credits. Page details allow
you to extend the screen a bit, but I found this difficult to use. Free
memory restores this memory (for sprite storage). Sketch pad is a good
idea gone wrong: if you have no brushes stored, you can flip to a
secondary drawing area. But since it cannot co-exist with brushes and
you cannot save or use any of it, it is a pointless facility. Now if you
could design a brush on it . . . Revelation has a Écolour paletteæ for
creating motifs, one of its best features.
4.10
Colour fixing allows one or more colours to be fixed on screen so that
you cannot draw over them. You can Invert so that only those colours can
be drawn on.
4.10
I was disappointed by Text: it uses a resident bit-mapped font, in just
a few selectable sizes. There is a very good editor (you can even have
outlined text), but who wants to mess around with a font editor these
days? To change fonts, you have to exit to the desktop and load in a new
one: there are a dozen not very exciting ones supplied. Contrast
Atelier: it accepts any outline font available and allows you to widen
out a rectangle for your text to fit into. Artisan2 also uses bit-mapped
fonts. Revelation uses outline fonts but size has to be set by altering
point size in the font dialogue box: this is fine in WP or DTP programs,
less appropriate than Atelieræs method for a freehand art package.
4.10
Magic colour is special. When anything is drawn using Brush or Pattern
as colour, or if a region is to be Range filled, it is first filled in
the Émagic colouræ. The algorithm scans the screen and uses all area(s)
of magic colour to fill in. Nothing exceptional about that you say? Here
is the fancy part: you can draw one or more shapes in the magic colour,
draw another in a plain colour and Range fill or Distort a Brush into
it: the fill is spread across the disconnected regions! Just think: you
can scan in a photograph (or digitise) yourself, pull this into Prism as
a brush and then spread your image round several circles (or rectangles
or triangles or sectors or ...). Artisan2 allows this distorting into
disconnected shapes as well, although it can be difficult to get
accurate fitting because of the way it works.
4.10
Desk is the final main menu option: as expected you exit to the desktop
and, if you subsequently return, you find everything exactly as you left
it (as with Atelier).
4.10
Bugs!
4.10
The program crashes fatally if you create disjoint regions using the
magic colour and then try to fill on the magic colour. There are several
other non-fatal bugs associated with magic colour and there is the
disappointing fact, already noted, that sprite transparencies do not
work in all circumstances. In Atelier, pressing <escape> aborts partly
completed operations (very desirable since some of them take an age to
complete). In Prism, <escape> takes effect only when the current
operation is complete and then always restores to plain line drawing.
4.10
Input/Output
4.10
This is all done from the desktop. Screens and sprites can be saved in
ordinary Ésystemæ form or compressed. This is very efficient Ö I have
tried a number of screens and they all saved in compressed format very
much faster than in Atelier, and used less memory. Typically, a screen
saved as 40 or 50K for a quite complex screen in two or three seconds,
against Atelieræs 50 or 60K and thirty seconds plus. Patterns, colour
sets, preferences and fonts can also be saved. You can print full size
or enlarged by factors 2, 4 or 8, with cut marks printed, using your own
screen dump printer driver. Prism co-exists happily with any other
installed programs and you can change mode at any time but must manually
change to mode 15 before actually using the program. Atelier selects
mode 15 itself and on exit returns you to the previous mode, a
friendlier scheme, but it does one very, very naughty thing: it unplugs
a relocatable (International keyboard), and fails to RmReinit it Ö very
puzzling for beginners who try subsequently to use <Alt> to get top-bit-
set characters in a WP package. Revelation works in any screen mode, a
very strong recommendation, but you cannot change mode once it is
installed on the icon bar: no doubt there is a technical reason for this
but it can be very irritating.
4.10
Best buy?
4.10
Artisan2 is protected by using a colour chart whereas Revelation
requires the insertion of the key disc every time it is loaded. (This
key-disc protection does not apply, however, when a school buys a site
licence.) Revelation is nice in that it is RISC-OS compliant and it can
make sense of sprites created in one mode but loaded into another.
However, it also has some notable weaknesses: you cannot Range fill, nor
mask out parts of a sprite, nor use many geometrical shapes. The first
two of these are key parts of modern computer art packages. I personally
do not like the program, which may well be my fault. I think that it is
because it deliberately departs from the conventions that have grown up
around computer art programs and almost hides some of its features in an
effort to create an air of simplicity.
4.10
As between Atelier and Prism and Pro-Artisan which I have yet to use
seriously I am still not sure. All three use unprotected discs which is
a good start. What Prism does well, it does very well. It is often very
stylish, and using the soft rounded menus is pleasant, as working in
good conditions is pleasant. However, it is also irritatingly self-
indulgent at times. As to the actual features of the packages, Atelier
certainly wins. It lacks the dither colour selections of Prism, some of
its shape drawing features, its fancy ready-made sprite transformations
and its colour-changing but there are far more facilities of Atelier
that Prism lacks Ö radial fills, text any size, the wrap-round-3D-image
transformations and a whole range of useful ways of interacting with the
screen. There is Éintensity paintæ (reading intensity from the screen
and re-doing in the correct shade of the current colour), Émixing paintæ
(a feature of Revelationæs as well), Éwashingæ (more sensibly called
Éblurringæ in Revelation, a sort of anti-aliasing of boundaries),
pixellation (lowering resolution Ö an interesting computer effect when
applied to areas of a finished picture), to name but a few. So is
Atelier the best? I suppose it is really but the fact is that I prefer
to use Prism where possible. Its menus and editing boxes are very
pleasant and, above all, it is really easy to choose colours. It is
probably true to say that Prism is better at creating pictures, Atelier
(or Revelation) at editing them. It is also true that none of these
programs is perfect: none gives even the vaguest help with perspective
for instance.
4.10
Other opinions
4.10
Let us hear what some other people think Ö shortened and paraphrased:Ö
4.10
Art teacher unused to computers of any kind: I prefer Paint! Actually I
do like what I have seen of Prism, but for pupils it is too complicated.
Revelation is too ugly: letæs go for Atelier Ö I like its Help box.
4.10
Able pupil who is an Archimedes lover: Revelation! Ö itæs the only one
thatæs RISC-OS.
4.10
Artistic computer-literate pupil, unused to Archimedes: Prism is hard to
get used to, but I do like its menus and some of its functions. Its wide
choice of colours gives it the edge over Atelier even though it lacks
some features.
4.10
Younger pupils: Artisan is easiest. We like Prismæs pattern editor, but
the whole program is too difficult. Atelier is difficult too, but at
least you get some help. Revelation doesnæt seem to do enough.
4.10
So, you pays your money... ! (ú61.20 +VAT from XOB or ú200 for a site
licence, to be exact.)ááA
4.10

4.10
Developing a RISC-OS Utility Ö Part 2
4.10
Darren Sillett
4.10
The aim of this article is to provide a collection of routines for
manipulating RISC-OS menus. The program code presented with this article
together with that from Part 1 (Archive 4.8, May 1991) will produce a
working application. This utility enables the user to change the
settings of some of the system variables by means of a simple menu
structure.
4.10
Menus
4.10
The RISC-OS menuing system provides a multi-level menu structure. This
means that any menu item can itself have its own menu. To accomplish
this in your own programs, you need to set up a fairly complex data
structure to pass to the window manager. I have tried to simplify this
by providing two routines to create the menu.
4.10
The first routine (FNcreate_menu) creates a single level menu by parsing
a string which describes the desired menu. The string takes the form:
4.10
öTitle,First option,Second Option,Last Optionò
4.10
This creates a single level menu with three options.
4.10
Each option can be followed by a special character to achieve effects
such as ticks and dotted lines.
4.10
These characters are:
4.10
# Ö menu item is ticked,
4.10
$ Ö menu item is followed by a dotted line,
4.10
% Ö menu item is shaded,
4.10
^ Ö menu item is writeable.
4.10
Lines 235 Ö 255 illustrate this routine.
4.10
The second routine (PROCmenu_attach) attaches two menus together to form
a multi-level menu. The first parameter is the parent menu, the second
is the menu item number that the child menu is to be attached to, and
the third parameter is the child menu. See lines 260 Ö 275 of !RunImage
for an example of this.
4.10
Other routines
4.10
There are several other routines provided in the extended Wimplib which
are used to query and manipulate the menu structure.
4.10
The most important ones are PROCshow_menu and PROCdecode_menu which
enable the application to display the menu and work out what has been
chosen once the menu is displayed. PROCreshow_menu is used whenever
<adjust> is pressed to select an item so that the same menu is
redisplayed.
4.10
Additions and amendments to !RunImage
4.10
To incorporate the menus into the application which we created in Part 1
you will need to delete lines 40, 50 from that published in May and add/
amend the following lines:
4.10
 86    WHEN 6 : PROCmouse_click (wimp_block%!8)
4.10
 89    WHEN 9   : PROCmenu_select
4.10
205 DIM buffer 40
4.10
225 task_id% = FNinitialise_wimp (öUltimate utilityò)
4.10
230 bar_icon% = FNcreate_bar_icon (ö!ultimateò,bar_icon_left)
4.10
235 icon_menu% = FNcreate_menu (öUltimate,Info%,Options,Quitò)
4.10
240 options_menu% = FNcreate_menu (öOptions,Copy,Count,Wipeò)
4.10
245 copy_options_menu%=FNcreate_menu (öCopy,Access,Confirm,Delete,
4.10
Force,Look,Newer,Prompt,Quick
4.10
,Recurse,Stamp,Structure,
4.10
Verbose$,Defaultò)
4.10
250 count_options_menu% = FNcreate_ menu(öCount,Confirm,Recurse
,Verbose$,Defaultò)
4.10
255 wipe_options_menu%=FNcreate_menu (öWipe,Confirm,Force,Recurse
,Verbose$,Defaultò)
4.10
260 PROCmenu_attach(icon_menu%,2, options_menu%)
4.10
265 PROCmenu_attach(options_menu%,1, copy_options_menu%)
4.10
270 PROCmenu_attach(options_menu%,2, count_options_menu%)
4.10
275 PROCmenu_attach(options_menu%,3, wipe_options_menu%)
4.10
400 DEF PROCmouse_click(click%)
4.10
410 CASE click% OF
4.10
420  WHEN menu_button :
4.10
430   IF wimp_block%!12 = icon_bar THEN
4.10
440    PROCupdate_menus
4.10
450    PROCshow_menu(icon_menu%, !wimp_block%-64,FNmenu_height
(icon_menu%))
4.10
460   ENDIF
4.10
470 ENDCASE
4.10
480 ENDPROC
4.10
500 DEF PROCmenu_select
4.10
510 LOCAL adjust%,menu_text$
4.10
520 adjust%  = FNadjust_pressed
4.10
530 menu_text$ = FNdecode_menu
4.10
540 CASE FNfield(menu_text$,ö.ò) OF
4.10
550  WHEN öQuitò : finished% = TRUE
4.10
560  WHEN öOptionsò :
4.10
570   CASE FNfield(menu_text$,ö.ò) OF
4.10
580    WHEN öCopyò :
4.10
590     PROCset_options(menu_text$, öAccConDelForLooNewProQui
RecStaStrVerò,öACDFLNPQRSTVò ,öCopyò, copy_options_menu%
4.10
,öA C ~D ~F ~L ~N ~P ~Q
4.10
 ~R ~S ~T Vò)
4.10
600    WHEN öCountò :
4.10
610     PROCset_options(menu_text$, öConRecVerò,öCRVò,öCountò,
count_options_menu%,
4.10
ö~C R ~Vò)
4.10
620    WHEN öWipeò :
4.10
630     PROCset_options(menu_text$, öConForRecVerò,öCFRVò,öWipeò
,wipe_options_menu%,
4.10
öC ~F ~R Vò)
4.10
640   ENDCASE
4.10
650 ENDCASE
4.10
660 IF (adjust% AND NOT finished%) THEN PROCreshow_menu
4.10
670 ENDPROC
4.10
700 DEF PROCset_options(option$, options$,sys_options$,system$
,menu%,default$)
4.10
710 LOCAL count,option,set,set$
4.10
720 option = INSTR(options$,LEFT$ (option$,3))
4.10
730 IF option > 0 THEN
4.10
740  PROCmenu_tick_toggle(menu%, (option DIV 3) + 1)
4.10
750  set$ = öò
4.10
760  FOR count = 1 TO (LEN(options$) DIV 3)
4.10
770   set=FNmenu_ticked(menu%,count)
4.10
780   IF set THEN set$ += ö ò ELSE set$ += ö ~ò
4.10
790   set$ += MID$(sys_options$, count,1)
4.10
800  NEXT count
4.10
810  OSCLI öSET ò + system$ + ö$Options ò + set$
4.10
820 ELSE
4.10
830  IF option$ = öDefaultò THEN
4.10
840   OSCLI öSET ò + system$ + ö$Options ò + default$
4.10
850   PROCupdate_menus
4.10
860  ENDIF
4.10
870 ENDIF
4.10
880 ENDPROC
4.10
900 DEF PROCupdate_menus
4.10
910 PROCset_menu_ticks (copy_ options_menu%,öCopyò, öACDFLNPQRSTVò)
4.10
920 PROCset_menu_ticks(count_ options_menu%,öCountò,öCRVò)
4.10
930 PROCset_menu_ticks(wipe_ options_menu%,öWipeò,öCFRVò)
4.10
940 ENDPROC
4.10
1000 DEF PROCset_menu_ticks(menu%, system$,valid$)
4.10
1010 LOCAL option,option$, tick_value%
4.10
1020 option$ = FNread_system_ variable(system$ + ö$Optionsò ,valid$ +
ö~ò)
4.10
1030 WHILE option$ <> öò
4.10
1040  IF LEFT$(option$,1) = ö~ò THEN
4.10
1050   tick_value% = FALSE
4.10
1060   option$ = RIGHT$(option$, LEN(option$) - 1)
4.10
1070  ELSE
4.10
1080   tick_value% = TRUE
4.10
1090  ENDIF
4.10
1100  option = INSTR(valid$,LEFT$ (option$,1))
4.10
1110  IF option > 0 THEN PROCset_menu_tick(menu%, option,tick_value%)
4.10
1120  option$ = RIGHT$(option$, LEN(option$) - 1)
4.10
1130 ENDWHILE
4.10
1140 ENDPROC
4.10
1200 DEF FNread_system_variable (variable$,match$)
4.10
1210 LOCAL option$,bytes,loop
4.10
1220 option$ = öò
4.10
1230 SYS öOS_ReadVarValò,variable$ ,buffer,40,0 TO ,,bytes
4.10
1240 buffer?(bytes + 1) = 13
4.10
1250 FOR loop = 0 TO bytes
4.10
1260  IF INSTR(match$,CHR$ (buffer?loop)) > 0 THEN option$
4.10
 += CHR$(buffer?loop)
4.10
1270 NEXT loop
4.10
1280 =option$
4.10
Additions and amendments to Wimplib
4.10
To add the menu routines to the Wimplib program the following additions/
amendments should be made to the program published in Part 1.
4.10
 25 LOCAL task_id%,version%
4.10
 30 DIM wimp_block% 512,menu_block% &1000,data_block% 64
4.10
 35 menu_free% = menu_block%
4.10
 61 adjust_button=1 : menu_button=2
4.10
 62 select_button=4 : icon_bar = -2
4.10
 65 current_menu% = -1
4.10
 66 menu_x% = 0 : menu_y% = 0
4.10
105 LOCAL icon%
4.10
140 wimp_block%!12 = 68
4.10
160 wimp_block%!20 = &3002
4.10
300 DEF FNcreate_menu(menu$)
4.10
310 LOCAL menu_ptr%,width%,title$
4.10
320 menu_ptr% = menu_free%
4.10
330 title$  = FNfield(menu$,ö,ò)
4.10
340 IF LEN(title$) > 12 THEN
4.10
350  $(menu_ptr%) = LEFT$(title$,12)
4.10
360  width% = 12
4.10
370 ELSE
4.10
380  $(menu_ptr%) = title$
4.10
390  width% = LEN(title$)
4.10
400 ENDIF
4.10
410 menu_ptr%?12=7 : menu_ptr%?13=2
4.10
420 menu_ptr%?14=7 : menu_ptr%?15=0
4.10
430 menu_ptr%!20=44 : menu_ptr%!24=0
4.10
440 menu_item_ptr% = menu_ptr% + 4
4.10
450 WHILE menu$ <> öò
4.10
460  menu_item_ptr% += 24
4.10
470  menu_item$ = FNfield(menu$,ö,ò)
4.10
480  !menu_item_ptr% = 0
4.10
490  menu_item_ptr%!4 = -1
4.10
500  menu_item_ptr%!8 = &7000021
4.10
510  WHILE INSTR(ö#$%^ò,RIGHT$(menu_ item$)) > 0
4.10
520   CASE RIGHT$(menu_item$) OF
4.10
530    WHEN ö#ò : ?menu_item_ptr% = ?menu_item_ptr%  OR %00000001
4.10
540    WHEN ö$ò : ?menu_item_ptr% = ?menu_item_ptr%  OR %00000010
4.10
550    WHEN ö%ò : menu_item_ptr%?10 = menu_item_ptr%?10 OR
4.10
 %01000000
4.10
560    WHEN ö^ò : ?menu_item_ptr% = ?menu_item_ptr%  OR %00000100
4.10
570   ENDCASE
4.10
580   menu_item$ = LEFT$(menu_item$)
4.10
590  ENDWHILE
4.10
600  IF LEN(menu_item$) > width% THEN width% = LEN(menu_item$)
4.10
610  $(menu_item_ptr%+12) = menu_item$ + CHR$(0)
4.10
620 ENDWHILE
4.10
630 ?menu_item_ptr% = ?menu_item_ptr% OR %10000000
4.10
640 menu_ptr%!16 = (width%*8+6)*2
4.10
650 menu_free% = menu_item_ptr% + 24
4.10
660 =menu_ptr%
4.10
700 DEF PROCshow_menu(menu%,x%,y%)
4.10
710 current_menu% = menu%
4.10
720 menu_x%    = x%
4.10
730 menu_y%    = y%
4.10
740 SYS öWimp_CreateMenuò,,menu%,x% ,y%
4.10
750 ENDPROC
4.10
800 DEF PROCreshow_menu
4.10
810 PROCshow_menu(current_menu%, menu_x%,menu_y%)
4.10
820 ENDPROC
4.10
900 DEF FNdecode_menu
4.10
910 LOCAL menu_text$
4.10
920 SYS öWimp_DecodeMenuò,, current_ menu%,wimp_block%, STRING$
4.10
(200,ö ò) TO ,,,menu_text$
4.10
930 =menu_text$
4.10
1000 DEF PROCmenu_attach(menu%, position%,attachment%)
4.10
1010 menu%!(28 + 24 * (position%-1) + 4) = attachment%
4.10
1020 ENDPROC
4.10
1100 DEF FNmenu_height(menu%)
4.10
1110 LOCAL height%,menu_item_ptr%
4.10
1120 menu_item_ptr% = menu% + 28
4.10
1130 height%    = 0
4.10
1140 WHILE (?menu_item_ptr% AND %10000000) = 0
4.10
1150  menu_item_ptr% += 24
4.10
1160  height%    += 1
4.10
1170 ENDWHILE
4.10
1180 =96 + (44 * (height% + 1))
4.10
1200 DEF PROCmenu_tick_toggle (menu%,position%)
4.10
1210 menu%?(28 + 24 * (position%-1)) = menu%?(28 + 24 *
4.10
(position% - 1)) EOR 1
4.10
1220 ENDPROC
4.10
1300 DEF PROCset_menu_tick(menu%, position%,ticked%)
4.10
1310 IF ticked% THEN
4.10
1320  menu%?(28 + 24 * (position% -1)) = menu%?(28 + 24 *
4.10
(position% - 1)) OR 1
4.10
1330 ELSE
4.10
1340  menu%?(28 + 24 * (position% - 1)) = menu%?(28 + 24 *
4.10
(position% - 1)) AND %11111110
4.10
1350 ENDIF
4.10
1360 ENDPROC
4.10
1400 DEF FNmenu_ticked(menu%, position%)
4.10
1410 LOCAL result%
4.10
1420 IF (menu%?(28 + 24 * (position% - 1)) AND 1) > 0 THEN
4.10
1430  result% = TRUE
4.10
1440 ELSE
4.10
1450  result% = FALSE
4.10
1460 ENDIF
4.10
1470 =result%
4.10
1500 DEF FNadjust_pressed
4.10
1510 SYS öWimp_GetPointerInfoò,, data_block%
4.10
1520 = (data_block%!8 AND 1)
4.10
1600 DEF FNfield(RETURN menu$, separator$)
4.10
1610 LOCAL result$
4.10
1620 result$ = LEFT$(menu$, INSTR(menu$+separator$,
4.10
separator$) - 1)
4.10
1630 menu$ = RIGHT$(menu$, LEN( menu$) - LEN(result$) - 1)
4.10
1640=result$
4.10
What next?
4.10
Next month, I hope to look at template files and how to incorporate a
simple window into the application. It would be beneficial if you got
some practice at using the !FormEd (On Shareware 20, ú3, or as the more
developed WIMP Template Editor, ú8) application released by Acorn to
create template files. You could, for example, make a copy of the
templates used by !Edit and have a go at changing those!
4.10
As before, if anyone has any ideas, problems, suggestions (or offers of
vast sums of money) I can be contacted either through Archive or at 43,
Kingfisher Walk, Ash, Aldershot, Hampshire GU12 6RF.ááA
4.10

4.10
Using FontEd
4.10
Robert Chrismas
4.10
FontEd is an outline font editor produced by Acorn. It is public domain
(Shareware 7). There is no printed documentation but the application
includes a !Help and a ReadMe file.
4.10
The ReadMe file says that FontEd is Éonly really useful for exporting
characters to Drawæ which understates the powers of this valuable
program. In fact, it can also be used to examine outline fonts, to alter
characters, or to create new characters.
4.10
Examining fonts
4.10
FontEd will display all the characters in an outline font. First load
FontEd; then look inside a !Fonts directory (you must use <shift double-
click> to open an application directory like !Fonts), and work down
through the directories until you find an outline file (easy to
recognise because it is called ÉOutlinesæ). Drag the outlines file onto
the FontEd icon. A window with a table showing all the characters in the
font should appear (the ÉFont Index Windowæ Ö see overleaf). To examine
a character in more detail double-click <adjust> on the character Ö this
produces the Éfullæ window. If you double-click <select> the Éskeletonæ
window will open and you will see how the letter is constructed.
4.10
Saving a character in Draw format
4.10
Each character is defined as a series of lines and curves, and you can
export theses line and curves as a draw object. Once the character has
been saved in this form you can use !Draw to rotate it, alter its fill
colour or outline colour or, with !DrawBender or !Poster, it can be bent
or distorted. To save a character, drag it on to a filer window. You do
not get a proper save window Ö the character is always saved as
ÉDrawFileæ so be careful not to overwrite something important.
4.10
Creating/altering characters
4.10
It is not unusual to find that a font lacks a character you require.
Some PD fonts omit less common punctuation marks. You might wish to
create an additional character, a foreign currency symbol, a trade mark
or perhaps just an open box to make creating forms simpler. Many
magazines use a special character to mark the end of each story (for
example Archive uses ÉááA  æ).
4.10
To produce your own character, first print out the FontEd !Help file and
read it. The text has a rather austere style but it does contain all you
need to know to operate the program. It is worth reading carefully
because the mouse buttons are given about six functions depending on the
context.
4.10
If you are creating a new character, you must first decide which slot in
the font index it will occupy. Now find the character which has a shape
most like your new character. For punctuation a full stop, a colon or an
inverted comma might be suitable, or for more geometrical shapes you
might try É+æ or É=æ. Drag this character into the slot where your new
character will go. The shape may be some help creating your new
character but, more importantly, you will transfer the scaffolding which
will help you to make sure that your new character lines up with the
others. Now you can double click <select> on the new character to open
the skeleton window.
4.10
The light blue lines are scaffolding; as well as ensuring that the
characters line up, they are used when the font manager converts the
outline to a bit map font. For our purposes, it will be sufficient to
treat them like guide lines.
4.10
Look for a red horizontal line with a cross at each end. This is the
base line, only descenders go far below this line. The crosses at each
end control the width of the character. The left hand edge of the
character should fall on, or just to the right of the left hand cross.
The right hand cross determines the space which the character occupies,
so the right hand edge of the character may be well inside the cross to
allow for some space before the next character. You may be unlucky
enough to choose a character which seems to have just one red cross and
no line. This means that the character has zero width Ö use the menu for
the skeleton window to increase the width.
4.10
The outline for the character will be shown in black with dark green
squares marking the control points. There may also be skeleton lines
within the character which are shown in the same way.
4.10
When you edit a character in the skeleton window, it is important to
remember that there are two editing Émodesæ, one to edit scaffolding,
the other to edit outlines. If a scaffolding line is selected (high
lighted in red) you can move scaffolding lines and link points to lines
but you can not move the control points to alter the outline. You can
change from editing outlines to editing scaffolding just by clicking on
a Écontrol blobæ (the light green circles), but it is not as easy to get
back to editing outlines. You must point to a blank area where there are
no lines and click <shift-select>.
4.10
You need to outline the shape you require. It may be possible to do this
just by dragging a few points with <adjust>. If that is all you need,
breath a sigh of relief make the adjustments and save the font from the
font index window in the usual way.
4.10
If you have to get involved in more strenuous editing, be careful
because just clicking <select> for too long is enough to create a new
line segment. Any drag with <select> will create a new line. You can
select a line segment with <adjust> which will allow you to delete
unwanted lines using the skeleton menu. If you create a line segment
which has an end near the loose end (1-node) of another segment, the
lines will automatically be linked.
4.10
If you select a straight line, two Écontrol pointsæ will appear on the
line which you can drag to make a curve. You can turn curves into lines
by using the Éstraightenæ option on the skeleton menu.
4.10
The program automatically decides which areas to fill. It treats all the
segments as a single path and uses the same öeven-oddò rule as Draw.
4.10
The font index window is updated as you edit the skeleton window, so
when you have finished editing you just save your work from the index
window.
4.10
Reservations
4.10
It does not seem unreasonable to make modifications for your own use,
but you should think carefully before distributing a modified font. It
is of course illegal to take a copyright font, modify a few characters
and the pass it off as your own. Public domain fonts are not protected
in the same way and it might seem reasonable to pass them on with a few
changes. However each font is someoneæs personal creation, on which he/
she has spent many hours. At the least his/her reputation is threatened
by the addition of a few amateur blobs.
4.10
It is just about possible to create a font from scratch using FontEd but
I would not recommend it. It would be hard work using FontEd.
4.10
In the ReadMe file there is a reference to Éa complete editor ...
available in due courseæ, but even with a better editor you should still
hesitate. If you are already interested in font design, you may wish to
experiment, but if all you want is a few more fonts then resist the
impulse to do it yourself. Archimedes owners have available a beautiful
range of professionally designed fonts at very reasonable prices. Many
of these are copies of fonts created for publishing by people who have
devoted their lives to designing good quality fonts. Learning to operate
an editing program is not even beginning to master this art.
4.10
Font names Ö a warning
4.10
You cannot change the name of a font simply by renaming its directory.
The name is also stored inside each file and it is this copy which is
used by the font manager. If you try to use a renamed font then every
time it has to be redrawn on the screen, the font manager will examine
the fonts cached in memory, it will fail to find a font with the right
name so it will load a copy from disk. The result is that redrawing the
font will take ages and your font cache, be it ever so big, will fill up
in no time at all. To rename the font, you must also change the name
inside each outline file, each IntMetrics file, and, for all I know each
Bitmap file if one exists. The easiest way is to use FontFix, on
Shareware 38 which will correct font names automatically.ááA
4.10

4.10

4.10
Protext 5 Wordprocessor
4.10
Peter Jennings
4.10
New word processors for the Archimedes have been disappointingly few,
compared with the DTP programs which have appeared in the last few
years. So, the decision by Arnor to produce an Archimedes version of
their successful Protext word processor was very welcome.
4.10
Protext, which has been under continuous development since 1984, is
described as a fully integrated word processing system, comprising word
processor, spelling checker, mail merge and file conversion and sorting
programs. The latest version, Protext 5, gives Archimedes owners the
chance to join users of IBMs and compatibles, Atariæs and Amigas. So,
does the Archimedes version live up to Protextæs reputation on the other
machines?
4.10
Protext arrives looking reassuringly business-like in a large, impres
sive, box containing three unprotected discs and a mass of documentation
including three manuals. The main one of these is nearly an inch thick
with a daunting 380 pages. The other two are a 48-page tutorial guide
and 22 pages on printer drivers.
4.10
The size of the main manual may deter some inexperienced computer users
but the tutorial offers an easy guide into the program and the bigger
book can be put aside for later reference. There is also on-screen help
and anyone familiar with word processing will be able to make an start
before opening either book. Of course, the main manual will soon be
found essential for discovering the rich variety of features the program
contains.
4.10
Compatibility between machines
4.10
Protext has been designed to work in the same way for all the machines
it supports and there is only one version of each manual, with machine-
specific paragraphs where necessary. If you use, say, a PC version at
work, you can move to your Archimedes at home with little if any
adjustment and can even work on the same files and possibly with the
same discs on both. When I tried Protext for the first time, I was
surprised for a moment to find the delete key was deleting the character
at the cursor instead of the one before it. Having used a PC, I soon
realised that the backspace key (the left-pointing arrow next to the
insert key) was the one to use and, of course, it was mentioned in the
manuals.
4.10
Customising
4.10
One of the great strengths of Protext is the extent to which it can be
customised. Any keys except shift and lock can easily be changed to suit
the individual user. So I quickly had the delete and copy keys set to
backward and forward deleting respectively, as I prefer.
4.10
The keyboard comes configured for US English. This is correct for the
Archimedes so do not make the mistake of changing it to UK English or
you will find that some of the keys are not behaving as expected.
4.10
At present, the program does not use the Archimedes WIMP system or
multi-tasking, although a RISC-OS version is promised for later this
year. Surprisingly, it does not even have its own icons and Protext
files appear on the desktop with blank squares. It does, however, return
correctly to the desktop when you quit the program.
4.10
The actual program is on just one of the three discs. The other two hold
a massive set of dictionaries and the printer drivers. Everything is
easily copied into a single directory on hard disc and will all load by
clicking on the application icon.
4.10
As well as spell-checking, the dictionaries can suggest a range of
likely alternatives to misspelt or mistyped words, list anagrams and
find word patterns. Other dictionaries are available for foreign
languages. The keyboard can be configured for ten different national
layouts and there is an enormous range of accents and characters for
nearly 30 languages including Welsh, Esperanto, Lithuanian, Slovene and
Flemish, with more to come.
4.10
The latest version, 5.08, has cleared up some odd bugs I found in an
earlier one but there is still a quirk when the program is loaded. It
starts up with some strange washed-out colours until the screen mode is
changed, or even reset to the same mode, when the configured colours
appear. In practice, this is no problem as the program can be configured
to do it automatically when starting up.
4.10
Pull down menus
4.10
At the top of the screen there is a ruler which can include tab marks, a
decimal point to line up any figures entered and a ÉCæ to centre the
text from anywhere in the line. Above that are two lines of information,
including the name and size of the current file, the cursor position and
selected options such as insert or overwrite mode, whether markers are
set and the caps lock condition. There is also an unobtrusive digital
clock (which can be switched off if not wanted) and a reminder that <F3>
produces a menu bar. This appears as a line of headings with pull down
menus similar to Inter-Word or the early versions of PipeDream. Escape
toggles between editing and a command line, set up in a window in the
lower third of the screen, allowing commands to be given to Protext or
to the Archimedes operating system.
4.10
Although the function keys are used, no function key strip is provided.
The commands are all duplicated in the menus or with key strokes but the
function keys are usually quicker to use. One exception is to press
<adjust>, instead of <F3>, to call up the menu bar.
4.10
Line drawing
4.10
Two of the function keys provide a novel facility. Pressing <ctrl-f7>
enables <alt> plus any of the four cursor arrow keys to draw a line in
the arrowæs direction. <Ctrl-f8> allows the choice of any character
(such as a full stop or a dash) to be used for lines drawn in the same
way.
4.10
Basic features
4.10
Protext 5 is very fast and powerful, with all the facilities expected in
a major word processor and some good unexpected features. They include
automatic reformatting, spell checking as you type or later, auto-
indent, find and replace, footnotes and indices, justification of text
to make a straight right-hand edge, word count and automatic saving at
preset intervals, all optional. There is background printing from a
buffer set up in memory, so that you can carry on with a new document
while your finished work is printed out, and a backup is made of the old
file when you save a new version. Up to 36 documents can be held in
memory and displayed on screen separately or two at a time, allowing
text to be moved between them. Two files shown on a split screen can
even be locked together to scroll simultaneously, making it simple to
compare similar documents. Roman numerals can be used.
4.10
Sophisticated features
4.10
The sophistication of some of its features is often a delight. You can,
for example, delete single letters or words, either forwards or
backwards, and delete to the start or end of a line and to the start or
end of a sentence. Deleting a word will, usefully, leave any punctuation
mark which follows it. There are keystrokes to produce half and quarter
signs and to swap adjacent letters which may have been mistyped. Place
markers can be inserted into a text so that you can move quickly between
sections, perhaps to make later additions. Directories which do not
already exist are created automatically when saving. Rows or columns of
figures can be added up and the total printed into the text if wanted,
simply by clicking on the figures to be included. Other calculations can
be made, enabling invoices to be typed with VAT added and totalled. The
facilities offered for mail merging take 40 pages of the manual to
detail.
4.10
Macro files can be used to program the function keys and the keys for
any letters of the alphabet, to store text or codes. Pressing the
appropriate function key or <alt> and the chosen letter then has the
same effect as typing in the programmed characters. So, for example, you
can have <shift-alt-f> programmed to add öYours faithfully,ò at the end
of your letters and <shift-alt-t> for öYours truly,ò and so on, each
followed by a number of blank lines and your name. The addition of the
shift key is not essential but worth using are there as some useful
commands already programmed for some alt and letter combinations, such
as <alt-d> to insert the date and <alt-t> for the time. There are also
exec files, which are typed in as text, containing commands and codes.
One can be run automatically when the program starts, to carry out any
desired instructions, such as changing mode and directory and turning
off caps lock (using *FX202,48). Templates can be saved containing
letter headings and page layouts, with stored commands for the printer
in Protextæs own programming language.
4.10
Printing is carried out using the printer font, including bold, italic
and underline styles which are shown on screen and also have optional
changes of colour. Text can be printed in columns but not shown on the
screen in this way. External fonts can not be loaded and it is necessary
to use one of the 48 printer drivers provided. The printer driver manual
lists suitable drivers for nearly 150 printers. There is a choice of
drivers for Epson compatibles, shown in order of features to make it
easy to find the best one for your printer if it is not listed by name.
4.10
Additional programs are provided to customise the Protext configuration,
to convert between different file types and for file sorting. The latter
can be used with other programs and is particularly useful. One of its
options is to sort by the last word on a line so that files of names and
addresses can be relisted alphabetically by surnames. There is a problem
with the present version making it sometimes necessary to quit and
reload Protext to use the convert and sort programs.
4.10
Should you buy it?
4.10
The advice when choosing a word processor (or any other program) must be
to check that it does what you want. Protext is not a DTP program and
anyone who needs to use a variety of fonts or lay out pages of text and
illustrations would find a DTP package more suitable. It is not fully
wysiwyg (what you see is what you get) and does not yet multi-task or
use RISC-OS windows. Otherwise, it seems to have everything anyone could
want from a word processor plus a variety of less-expected but very
useful features.
4.10
I think the promised RISC-OS version could make it a real winner for the
Archimedes but should you buy one now? If you can afford to wait you may
prefer to go for the RISC-OS Protext later this year but if you need a
word processor now, and you like the sound of Protext, it is still worth
getting the present version. The cost, including the new rate of VAT, is
ú152.75 (ú138 from Archive). Arnor say the RISC-OS upgrade may be issued
on its own at a nominal price or could come as part of a general upgrade
costing less than ú30.ááA
4.10

4.10
Contact Box
4.10
Å    Lancashire Archimedes Group Ö Anybody interested in forming an
Archimedes user group please contact Ian Rhodes, 864 Manchester Road,
Rochdale OL11 2SP (0706Ö31810).ááA
4.10

4.10

4.10

4.10
MEMORANDUM
4.10
Screenshot
4.10

4.10
PC Windows 3 in a RISC-OS window on the new PC-Emulator
4.10

4.10
- Includes MEMC1a upgrade
4.10
- Large capacity OS ROM sockets
4.10
- No soldering required
4.10
- Four layer printed circuit boards
4.10
- Courier collection of your machine
4.10
  2nd Mb - ú225  4th Mb - ú299
4.10

4.10
23 The Greenway  Orpington  Kent  BR5 2AY  Tel [phone]  Fax 0689
896088
4.10

4.10
The Complete Upgrade Solution
4.10

4.10
- New series Aleph One ARM3
4.10
- 3 to 4 times performance increase
4.10
- Surface mount technology
4.10
- Four layer printed circuit board
4.10
- Courier collection of your machine
4.10
  ARM 3 upgrade - ú399
4.10

4.10
- Uses only eight RAM devices
4.10
- Suitable for A440, A400/1 & R140
4.10
- Fully RISC OS compatible
4.10
- Four layer printed circuit boards
4.10
- Courier collection of your machine
4.10
  8 Mb upgrade - ú749
4.10

4.10
- Increases resolution with all Multiscan monitors
4.10
- Doubles desktop work area
4.10
- Custom modes for Taxan and Eizo monitors
4.10
- Suitable for all Archimedes computers
4.10
- Free with any multiscan monitor from Atomwide
4.10
  Atomwide VIDC Enhancer - ú29
4.10

4.10
- All products are cross-compatible
4.10
- Combination deals available on all products
4.10
- Typical combination A310 4 Mb and ARM3 ú675
4.10
- Dealer enquires welcome
4.10
- Phone for full details on all products
4.10
  All prices exclude VAT at 17.5% but include delivery
4.10

4.10
- 400 series RAM upgrade kits
4.10
- Supplied with full fitting instructions
4.10
- 410/1 to 420/1 requires 1Mb
4.10
- 420/1 to 440/1 requires 2Mb
4.10
- 410/1 to 440/1 requires 3Mb
4.10
  1Mb - ú35  2Mb - ú65  3Mb - ú99
4.10

4.10
- Syquest removable disk systems
4.10
- Including One cartridge, drive unit and all cables
4.10
- 42Mb removable cartridges
4.10
- High-flow fan fitted for improved cooling
4.10
- Please phone for prices on other SCSI related products
4.10
  Atomwide Syquest drive unit - ú470  42Mb disks - ú64
4.10

4.10
- Uses only eight RAM devices
4.10
- User upgradeable from 1 to 4 Mb
4.10
- Four layer printed circuit board
4.10
- Low power consumption
4.10
- Available without RAM devices
4.10
  Bare card - ú35  2nd Mb - ú56  4th Mb - ú159
4.10

4.10
Safesell Exhibitions (p5)    Market
House, Cross Road, Tadworth, Surrey KT20 5SR.
4.10
Sherston Software     Swan Barton,
Sherston, Malmesbury, Wilts. SN16 0LH. (0666Ö840433) (Ö840048)
4.10
Silicon Vision Ltd    Signal
House, Lyon Road, Harrow, Middlesex, HA1 2AG. (081Ö422Ö2274) (Ö427Ö5169)
4.10
Simtron Ltd    4 Clarence Drive, East Grinstead, W. Sussex, RH19 4RZ.
(0342Ö328188)
4.10
Soft Rock Software    124 Marissal
Road, Henbury, Bristol, BS10 7NP. (0272Ö503639 evenings)
4.10
The Serial Port    Burcott Manor, Wells, Somerset, BA5 1NH. (0243Ö531194)
(Ö531196)
4.10
Topologika    P.O. Box 39, Stilton, Peterborough, PE7 3RL. (0733Ö244682)
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. (0661Ö33017) (Ö36163)
4.10
XOB    Balkeerie, Eassie by Forfar, Angus, DD8 1SR. (0307Ö84364)
4.10

4.10