Letters Page
Thinner than a celeb on a celery diet, it's the RISCWorld letters, my god it's quiet...
After being delighted with the letters we received for the last issue things have dropped off a bit. Well, quite a bit. OK, a lot. So in order to keep the column filled up, this edition of the letters page may, or may not, contain a fictional letter that's designed to pad it out...
Dear Aaron,
I Don't know if this got through the first time. I definitely typed some text, but the Lycos sent folder says I didn't. Anyway, the attachment is the long-delayed remainder of the inlays, split into three ovation pro files
1) The remaining issues from vol5
2) The whole of vol6
3) The first two of vol7
I'll try and do them in pairs (and more punctually) from now on.
Matt
Sorry, the first one didn't get through, but this one did. So, many thanks for these inlays. I have included them in the software directory on this issues CD. The files are all in OvationPro format. If anyone doesn't have a copy of OvationPro then may I suggest that this would be an excellent opportunity to download a demo copy and have a play. It really is an excellent desktop publishing and word processing package.
Now we have a follow up from the previous issue.
Dear Aaron,
Thanks for your reply via the subscription disc. I was able to decompress the PD Tar file with !SparkFS by changing its file type, as you suggested.
I don't know
a) Where I first ran across the idea of a grammar diagnosis application.
b) Exactly where I got the Tar file from,
BUT I have ported it into a little application - !GramDiag, which I supply attached, zipped to you, with the original C code, my ported code and an example of a bad Bison grammar to test it on.
Up to 3 a.m. this morning working on it - 'Dawn Chorus' : The signal for the programmer to go to bed!
It turns out that there is a GNU (Free Software Foundation) application 'gramdiag', that does the job hanging around in the PD.
In this respect, I keep on running across the name 'Paul Moore', who did a lot of porting of GNU applications, originally to the Archie. He deserves an honourable mention.
!GramDiag should (fingers crossed) be 32-bit compatible.
Users should, at least, read the file supplied with this, '!ReadMe', for more info.
NB If there are no errors to report, the output file is blank. On the other hand, if there are many errors, the report can get very large.
May I mention my web site www.martinkd.freeuk.com , which currently has 46 pieces of Acorn software up on it, and a hyper link to a sister site for my IBM software??
Regards,
Martin Carradus
Thanks for the letter. Was the website that you mentioned www.martinkd.freeuk.com? If so then I am sure we can find room for a mention somewhere. I am pleased that you were able to decompress the TAR file following the suggestions provided.
I have put a copy of the !GramDiag application in the software directory of this issue. I've not personally heard of Paul Moore, but it might be worth Googling for him to see if you can find him.
Moving on this surprise letter came into the office recently...
Dear Aaron
I was reading the start of this column, where you said there may be a fictional letter on the letters page. Well try as I might I have been unable to find it. Can you tell me which one it is?
Mr F. Ictional
Thanks for the letter. As your letter arrived just in time and we were able to publish it, we didn't need to make up any letters for this issue. So you can look as hard as you like but you won't find any made up letters on this page, no siree!
Anyway that's all for this issue's letters page. Please do write to us, please...I'll sulk if you don't...
Aaron Timbrell