@BEGIN_FILE_ID.DIZ AmyNews AmyNews AmyNews AmyNews AmyNews   A A m AmyNews Issue 16/April - 1995 m y A compilation of new hardwares and y N softwares for the Amiga N e _ e w _ // Amiga Technologies International w s \X/ Powered by Motorola. s   PLEASE SPREAD THIS FILE AmyNews AmyNews AmyNews AmyNews AmyNews @END_FILE_ID.DIZ     _# **MMp g##0 `N##0" _agN#0P0N# _# Go g## jN## j##F J## _dN0" " g## _#]## _0 ##L jN##F ### g#0" _03## gE_j## # 0## jF ##F j##F j## ______ gE_j## _0"""N## d" J##L0 ##F 0## 0## "9##F" _0"""5## _gF ]## jF ##0 ##F ##F `##k d## _gF j## _g#_ _j##L__g#__ ]N _j##L_ _d##L_ `#Nh___g#N' _g#_ _j## `"""" """""'""""' " """""" """""" """"""" `"""" Go """"" /\ /..\ _ /....\ _ // AMIGA, Amiga Technologies International. /......\ \X/ Powered by Motorola. /_......_\ |....| |....| Taste the power. TODAY! ____ l....l _________________________ Amiga, Multitasking since 1985. ___ |....| |....| __________________________________________________ |....| | __ | |....| | __ ___________ ___________ AMIGA == | |....| |[_j L_I_I_I_I_j L_I_I_I_I_j ~~~~~ | |....| |________________________________ _______ _________| |....| |[__I_I_I_I_I_I_I_I_I_I_I_I_I_I_] [__I__] [_I_I_I_]| |....| |[___I_I_I_I_I_I_I_I_I_I_I_I_] | _ [_I_I_I_]| |....| |[__I_I_I_I_I_I_I_I_I_I_I_I_L___| _[_]_ [_I_I_I_]| |....| |[_____I_I_I_I_I_I_I_I_I_I_I____] [_I_I_] [_I_I_T || |....| | [__I__I_________________I__L_] ________ [___I_I_j| `----' | | l__________________________________________________| This is AmyNews 16 News always start from the begining of this file. These are only a fraction of what developers are developing for the Amiga platform.   Henrik Jensen Editor-In-Chief. AmyNews 95 _________________________________________________________________________   - RealSoft announces April 95 release of the very long awaited Real 3D version 3.0. The new version features: - Triset meshes allow colorization of individual faces -> better support for converted triangle objects - New normal orientation feature to fix phong shading problems of converted objects (Modify/freeform/Surface type) - General polygonal conversion enables more complete object export - Backdrop image is visible through clip mapped surfaces - Settings/attributes allows definition of default depth and name of objects - Repeat last action feature with a hot key - Edit primitive geometry for accurate numeric editing of primitives - Automatic field Interlacing feature for field to frame conversion - Interactive hierarchical skeletons with better IK control and angle constraints - Improved Inverse Kinematics method accepts multiple parameter curves and snaps automatically to the nearest joint - Draw as bounding box - object attribute - Fast background image drawing function - New window type, toolbar, which includes useful creation and modelling features such as: - Coordinate input - Creation depth input by value and by a user defined line - Angle input for rotations - Important hot-key functions like Tab=Center Del=Undo-one-step etc. available as buttons for easier 'getting started' - New 'key frame' animation method: - Saves memory, because key positions are represented as coordinate systems - Does not generate unintentional elastic stretches on target objects - Shrink wrap available as an animation method A new 'Surface' method, which makes rotating, walking etc. objects automatically move along surfaces - Much improved key editor: - Anim playback control - Integrated interface for creating and editing most animation methods - New key creation and deletion control - 'Redistribute evenly' function - Envelope control for accurate key frame animation editing - Discrete morphing for immediate shape changes - Complete tag morphing support can be used to e.g. dissolve objects by morphing the new fade property - Curve knot timing of path based methods is now possible 8 bit alpha channel output in IFF file rendering - Non-adaptive, super sampled rendering for best anti-aliasing quality - Open post-processing interface for various special effects like lens flares, global fogs etc. The interface allows third party developers to hook post-effect libraries to Real 3D - New 'fade' object attribute, which enables easy fade-in and fade-out of objects, quickly rendered transparent layers etc. - 'Glow' material property for creating coronas, fire, laser beams etc. New material color handler for defining a constant material color which replaces object's original color. - New 'Roughness. mathematical bump map, with density and bump height control - New 'Dither' mathematical color map with density and bump height control - Additional Edge X/Y gradient control for texture gradients allows sharp texture map edges with interpolated texture map interior - Infinite tiling is now possible also when applying FreqX/Y feature to make texture Denser - this fixes the 'seam' problem in spherical mapping. - Much faster clip mapping - Round modify function for easy edge rounding of curves, polygons etc. - Primitives can now been edited using accurate numerical Interface - RPL has been extended much, especially GUI programming is now possible. - Camera view mode windows are now updated instantly when a camera object has been modified, not only during animation play. - Improved FLI/FLC support - A feature to project mouse coordinates to existing objects: this enables e.g. drawing a curve directly on the surface of another object. - Modify/Special/Reflect feature makes it possible to place a highlight from a light source to a location pointed by a mouse click. - Special/Vectors/Deselect Group can be used to exclude overlapping points when creating sub groups - Fractal generator (Tree/Landscape) parameter loading and saving - A new animation method attribute to torn off Inheritance of time modifications - Plug-in support for post-processing effects (i.e. lens flares), - Essence textures will implemented via an external "plug-in" called Realize! (which will also include such effects as lens flares) - Numeric input for many tools - Background images to align objects - Constraints for object joints. - Much faster (up to 5 times in some cases) B-Spline rendering - Better DXF format object conversion - rewritten clip mapping - Interactive hierarchical skeletons - Skeletal constrains, min/max angles of rotations, 2D & 3D joints - IFF file in the background - Shrink Wrap animation method - Much better TRUE keyframing - Along surface animation method - Envelopes - Open post-processing interface for special effects like fog, lens flare - Object fading - "glow" parameter in material editor - New antialiasing - "Round" function in modelling - full GUI addition to RPL - Camera view are updated constantly - New animation methods. And the bug fixes: - Saving/reloading links no longer makes links 'read-only' - Box rendering to a file uses now box dimensions as it should (this bug was only In Windows version) - Deleting/adding points from/to multiple freeform objects work correctly now. - Field rendering bug fixed (odd fields were shifted up!) - Boolean rethink bug of cut pyramid fixed - Ellipsegment wireframe problems fixed (Lathe tool sometimes produced invalid wireframes, which could not be recreated after reloading) - Invisible compound objects are invisible in modifications also after saving and reloading. - The font curve extractor creates only spline curves Previously some characters of certain fonts produced polygonal outlines that could not be extruded (Windows version) - Font curve extractor/Scandinavia character map bug fixed - Box rendering sometimes created errors on the right and bottom edge of the box This is now fixed - Anti-aliasing to backdrop image works now properly also in Amiga version - Backdrop image is now visible through clip mapped surfaces - Parallel curve for polygonal lines works better now Modify/Freeform/Distribute works now properly also with complex curves with over 200 points - Environment rendering set environment gradient automatically This does not happen any more. Registered users will receive an update offer, a bundle with TVPaint 3.0 will be available as well. Prices are not known yet. - The Netherland based company Lyppens Software Productions announces the release of Video Backup System, VBS, version 3.1. For more information on VBS and the 3.1 upgrade package contact: Lyppens Software Productions Generaal Coenderslaan 25 5623 LT Eindhoven The Netherlands Phone/Fax: +31-40-461403 - After 3 years of developments, Musicline Editor version 1.0, the new flexible, powerful, and easy-to-use musiceditor for the Amiga is finaly released. An unregistred demo version of Musicline Editor is released to AmiNet. The current version features: - 4/8 channels - 5 octaves - 1024 parts - 128 steps maximum part length (flexible) - 256 sequencer steps - 255 instruments - 255 wavesamples - Separate sequencelist for each channel - Realtime part transpose - Separate speed/groove in each channel - 127kb maximum sample-size - 5 effects per notestep - 256 subtunes per module - Flexible instrument structure: - Each wavesample can be used in multiple instruments - 16/32/64/128/256 bytes waveform length for realtime effects - Volume - Semitone - Finetune - Auto glide - Transposable on/off - Envelope (ADSR; Attack, Decay, Sustain, Release) - Vibrato - Tremolo - Arpeggio (with multiple subeffects) - Realtime waveform effects: Transform Phasing Mix (can be used as a Chorus) Resonance Filter (resonance & normal) - Animation (create a sample of your synthetic sound) - Playloop (put realtime effects on samples, like phasing & timestretch etc.) - Sample start & end offset - Loop (multiple directions) - Protracker module loading compatible - Advanced Systems & Software, AS&S, Germany, the maker of CyberVision and CyberStorm 68060 for the Amiga is currently developing 2-GO!, an all new DSP-Board for the Amiga. The Zorro-III DSP Board allows you to greatly speed up your Amiga. MPEG/ JPEG coding and decoding is possible in real time. The 2-GO! processors are freely programmable, so one could use it as a render engine, port OpenGL to it, do audio processing etc. The hardware consists of a very fast Zorro-III interface (up to 34MB/sec) , 64 bit DSP memory, a 64bit port to the CyberVision64 graphics board and audio/video in & output. The board is powered by a DSP (max. 2 billion instructions/sec), a master RISC CPU (50 MIPS) and a floating point unit (100 MIPS). This is enough number crunching power for MPEG/JPEG de-/encoding, or for rendering 750.000 gourard shaded polygons/sec to the Cybervision. The software is planned to include a MPEG/JPEG tool, interfaces to 3D renderes and image processors and libraries for you project developement. The 2-GO! should be released during the second half of 1995, at a projected price of $2600 US. Phase 5 digital products (used to be Advanced Systems & Software, AS&S) Homburger Landstrasse 412 60433 Frankfurt am Main Germany Phone: +49 (69) 5488130 Fax: +49 (69) 5481845 - Digita International has just released a free patch that will uppgrade DataStore, the Amiga personal database manager, 1.0 Release 1 to Release 3 version 1.0r3. - A new version 1.4 of GfxCon, the image format converter for the Amiga is now released. GfxCon is a powerful and easy to use image converter that is totaly freeware. it features: - Supports ILBM, LBM, RGB8/RGBN, PCX, IMG, BMP/RLE4/RLE8, GIF, TIFF, JPEG Targa, RGB-Raw, Postscript image formats. - Virtual memory on any Amiga even those without a MMU - Multiple language support - Several kinds of common image modifications are supported like changeing the resolution, contrast of the image or numerous color- effects and more. Dirk Farin Kapellenweg 15 72070 Tübingen Germany EMail: farindk@trick.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de - A new freeware (current version 42.0) drop-in replacement for the C= Translator Library is now uploaded to the AmiNet. This library features: - Replaces Commodore's translator.library - Provides multi-lingual text-to-speech support. The following languages/ dialects/accents are currently supported by this library: - English - American - Italiano - Cymraeg - Maori - Suomi - Swedish - Works with all OS versions - Allows language to be specified in the text to be translated - 100% compatible with the C= translator library Francesco Devitt EMail: ffranc@comp.vuw.ac.nz Phone: +64 4 388-3215 - Soft-Logik Publishing has now released the seventh free update patch version 3.0G to the king of DTP programs, PageStream. The new version features: - Added a tip number indicator to the Navigator. Now it will say "5 of 103" in the Navigator when you are reading tip 5 out of a total of 103 tips. - Lessons 1, 2 and 5 can be successfully completed with this version - TEXT: - Implemented quadruple click to select an entire article - Starting a new text frame or object while text is highlighted will now deselect the text - You no longer have to press Return in the Tab requester's text gadgets for your changes to take effect. - Fixed applying of style tags spelled with characters greater than 128 - FONTS: - Large and complex PostScript fonts that did not work with previous versions of PageStream3 should now work - Fixed some character mapping problems (apostrophe types, centered periods etc) - Fixed the display of the closesnglquote character for PostScript fonts - Fixed oblique PostScript fonts. Characters were backslanted instead of slanted - Rendering a PostScript or DMF font (the first time before it is cached) is up to 15% faster now, depending on your processor - Fixed slanting and twisting of Compugraphic fonts beyond 50 degrees - PRINTING, ALL TYPES: - Fixed printing of chapter level pages - POSTSCRIPT PRINTER DRIVER: - Fixed printing of color separations, merged paths, arrowheads, bitmap fill patterns - When you choose a PPD file, the default filename will now be the last used PPD file - Thumbnail printing: now inserts 15% as the default scale so that you don't accidentally print 100% thumbnails. Correct page numbers are now printed with crop and reg marks for thumbnails - Fixed an obscure dashed line problem - ALL NON-POSTSCRIPT PRINTER DRIVERS: - Implemented landscape printing to non-PostScript printers - Implemented faster and better quality Floyd-Steinberg dithering - EPSON PRINTER DRIVER: - The Epson driver no longer has a 1/2" margin at the bottom for continuous paper - Added more Canon models to the Model list - FARGO PRINTER DRIVER: - The Fargo driver now supports the PrimeraPro as well as the Primera - Improved color correction has been implemented for wax thermal output on the Fargo Primera and Primera Pro - Improved 4 color output has been implemented for the Fargo Primera and Primera Pro - Fixed the stop problem with the Fargo driver - IFF ILBM PRINTER DRIVER: - Corrected the B4 and B5 output sizes for the IFFILBM printer driver - Modified the black&white and grayscale output for the IFFILBM printer drivers to make it compatible with programs that do not properly support all IFFILBM options. - OBJECTS: - Improved the speed of object drawing and selection by 10% compared to PageStream 3.0f. The amount of change will depend on your processor and the type of object - Improved the speed of the Transform command. It is now up to eight times faster than 3.0f and three times faster than 2.2. A busy pointer has been added while the copies are being created - The Transform requester now displays the last values entered rather than resetting them to the defaults each time its used - Due to popular request, a Crayons color library has been added to match the color Crayon64 color palette from 2.2 - Make Drawing now updates the menus and Edit palette correctly - Fixed applying of colors spelled with characters greater than 128 - Grid objects are now limited to 99 cells as documented in the manual - GRAPHIC IMPORT/EXPORT: - Fixed a problem with Freehand EPS files crashing during import - PAGESTREAM3 DOCUMENT OPENING/SAVING: - Fixed the document naming problem - Changed Save as Template to work as described in the manual - PAGESTREAM2 DOCUMENT OPENING: - Fixed converting of document, color and style tag names containing characters greater than 128 - PROPAGE DOCUMENT OPENING: - Much improvments have been done; Fixed paragraph indents, leading (line spacing), paragraph spacing, character mapping problems, the new line vs new paragraph problem, rotated columns which imported unrotated, text wrap problems, the column count problem - MISCELLANEOUS: - The Edit/Undo and Redo command names will change to reflect what you are undoing or redoing - Fixed problems with undoing scaling, appending and saving color palettes (from Settings/Colors), enforcer hits related to the page palette, the use of special characters (including accents) in color names, bullets and filled tabs - Added alert requesters for accessing the help system when AmigaGuide, the help files, or a help node cannot be found - Create Columns will now display a busy pointer while the column frames are created - Edit palette coordinates are now shown for the Magnify tool - Exporting a macro script now defaults to the macro name, not the last used file - SEND TO EDITOR & TEXT CODES: - New Feature! You can now return to PageStream from PageLiner, TurboText or BME by just closing the article or picture window. This will leave the editor open when you return to PageStream - When text is sent to the editor, the cursor in PageLiner or TurboText now appears after the header instead of before it - Fixed paragraph indent text codes; indented text sent to PageLiner would return with incorrect indent values - OTHER MACRO SCRIPTS: - Added two new features to the Print Font Specimens macro script (FontSpec.rexx). You can now select the fonts to print specimens for, and choose to print 6 font samples on a page instead of one per page - Improved Go to Master Page script (GotoMasterPage.rexx) - MACRO COMMANDS: - New commands: loadprintprefs, saveprintprefs - New parameters for: selecttext, getpagemasterpage, scaleobject - Fixed the scale parameter for scaleobject - Corrected documentation for: settoolmode, settypestyle, addarexxgadget, setarexxgadget - Added some instructions to the help system on using requesters from macro scripts. Choose Macros & ARexx from the main help contents screen, and then choose Using Requesters in a Macro from the next screen - Added an example to the help system of how to create a string sensitive alert requester function - HELP SYSTEM: - Added instructions for installing additional fonts. - BME: - The Edit/Undo and Redo command names will change to reflect what you are undoing or redoing - The selection marquée in non-active windows is now shown differently from the marquée in the active window to avoid confusion - Closing a window with a selected area is faster - Fixed a problem with running out of memory while making a selection - Fixed a problem with redoing an erase operation - No longer records 'setbrushsize' when opening or creating a picture - Some redundant redraws have been removed - Undoing a deselect is now faster - New macro command: getpicture - PAGELINER: - New macro command: getarticle - Saving settings no longer deletes the PUBSCREEN item from the pref file - TECHNICAL NOTES: - The PageStream3.printprefs file is no longer used. Printing preferences are now saved in the main PageStream3.prefs file SoftLogic is now shipping a JPEG import/export filter for PageStream3. A new Wordworth document filter (which will open entire Wordworth documents as opposed to importing text into a text frame) will be available during May 95. Soft-Logik Publishing 315 Consort Drive St. Louis, MO 63011 USA Soft-Logik Publishing PO Box 3838 Ballwin, MO 63022-3838 USA Phone: 1-800-829-8608 (Sale) 314-256-9595 Phone: 1-800-829-5816 (Technical Support) 314-256-9333 Fax: 314-256-7773 BBS: 314-256-8971 - AmyNews normaly doesn't cover game news but we just love TextDemo version 5.7 and we want to let you know that there are currently 2 games under development using the same engine. Shade is a fantasy game with a great storyline. Mystic Tanks is a BattleZone clone that uses TextDemo engine and has support for multiple players etc. - A new version 3.10 of the PC-Task, the software only Intel 80X86 emulator, is now released. The new version features: - Changed Advanced Video Options Mode heading to PCMode to avoid confusion - Now displays current mode in Advanced Video Options in color 1! - Advanced video options now goes to start text mode of graphics adapter - Fixed two sound bugs - Finally seem to have all programs recognizing VGA is present - Windows 3.1 Video 7 640*480*256 800*600*256 1024*768*256 drivers work - Fixed problem when video driver memory couldn't be allocated - Fixed top of display trash when turning on internal mouse driver - Fixed garbled problem with 800*600*16 screen on AGA machine - Fixed Internal stack overflow with keyboard interrupt - Fixed problem with more than one colon in CONFIG.SYS PCTCDROM.SYS line - Included known upper case CDROM devices to allow opening correct name - Fixed problem with jumping to BIOS reset with <1Meg allocated - Fixed problem with internal mouse driver enabled coming out of windows - Fixed a problem with internal mouse driver and WP51 - PC reset now sets timer tick interrupt back to normal - Create HardDiskFile can now handle 64 to 255 Meg by using 16 heads - Fixed MDA Palette routine problem that could crash under Kickstart 1.3 - Many other smaller changes. Quasar Distribution __ P.O. Box 188 / /\ Southland __ / / / A Victoria 3192 /_/\/ / / G Australia \ \ \/ / I   \ \ / M Phone +61 3 583 8806 \_\/ A Fax +61 3 585 1074 BBS +61 3 584 8590 - A new version 1.84 of Dust for Imagine and LightWave is now released. Dust is a programmable F/X-generator for Imagine and Lightwave, such F/X as Morphs, Waves, Particles, Mathematical distortions, etc are supported. Dust is a F/X-software manipulating 3D-objects. So it's a perfect completion for your modelling-program and comes with many features that no modelling-program has. Dust version 1.84 features: - Dust is fast, has no ugly GUI - there are about 200 commands you can enter interactively or execute from batch-files - Dust has an Arexx port - Full Imagine3.0-texture and brush support - Full LightWave support - You can open as many preview windows as you want (real Multitasking) - Online-Help like UNIX-like programs, command-completion, etc - Loops and global variables like mathematical software - Loading, saving and viewing of object-sequences - Metamorphosis between any two objects - Particle-system: exetremely simple structure, allowed by the object- modelling never seen effects - Realistic explosions (gravity, stokes-friction, ...) - Realistic water-waves (3D-unharmonic waves) - 1D-,2D- and 3D-waves, transversal, longitudinal, including particle- waves - Mathematical distortion of points, face-colors, particles, so you can use Dust as simple function-plotter, too - Every programmer can create various particle-effect in an easy way, the knowledge of the TDDD-format (or object-structures etc.) is not necessary - Every face can have an own color, every edge has a sharp/soft-flag, this data is kept creating particle-objects - Handling and changing of Imagine3.0-textures and -brushes - Sphere-objects: particle-Objects made of real spheres - Creation of objects from external programs - User-defined variables, mathematical expressions instead of plain numbers as arguments, loops - Very flexible preview-function - Online-help - Command-, Parameter- and help-topic-completion (ala Unix) - With Dust you can linear-combine all kinds of effects - Create very realistic water-waves, WATER and WATERFRAME Andreas Maschke Zenkerstraße 5 06108 Halle/Saale Germany Phone: ++49 (0)345/5170331 EMail: epgbc@cluster1.urz.Uni-Halle.DE An unregistred demo version of Dust is released to AmiNet. - Utilities Unlimited International, inventer of the Amiga Emplant technology about to release a new version of the software for the newly released e586DX (IBM PC) Emulation Module. the new version features: - Size of the executable program down to 1Mb from 1.7Mb - Has the all important bug-fix to run Windows etc. - Is generally faster all round. Utilities Unlimited, Inc. 1641 McCulloch Blvd. Suite #25-124 Lake Havasu City, AZ 86403 USA Phone: (602) 680-9004 Phone: (602) 453-6407 Fax: (602) 453-9767 BBS EMail: jim_drew@cryo.rain.com - UseNet EMail: j.drew2 - GEnie - Ralph Schmidt annouces the release of CyberGuard mainly for the Cyberstorm 060. Cyberguard has the same functionality as Enforcer V37 (by M.Sinz) with the enhancements of a build in a disassembler and a GuardianAngel mode. GuardianAngel mode means that it can writeprotect free memory pages to detect random write bugs that are rather difficult to find. So programmers won't miss their most used debug tool, Enforcer, when they develop 68060 applications. CyberGuard is uploaded to AmiNet. - Stefan Becker has released a minor upgrade version 2.1a to the all time best Amiga utility ToolManager v2.1. The new update patch features: - toolmanager.library v3.1, Added support for ScreenNotify - screennotify.library v1.0, Notify on screen close/private/public - WBStart-Handler v1.4, Fixed path problems - toolmanager.doc, Missing AutoDocs for toolmanager.library Stefan Becker Verkehrstrasse 11 D-44809 Bochum GERMANY EMail: stefanb@yello.ping.de - The Amiga raytracing software, Imagine from Impulse Inc. is now released in a new version 3.2. Impulse Inc. Phone: 612-425-0557 - The UK company Almathera Systems Limited is developing an update version 1.2 to it's wonderful paint and image manipulation package Photogenics. New version 1.2 will be available in mid to late March and will features support for Harlequin and other Grafexa-style graphics cards to the new render-able boards, support for CyberGFX system that allows the owner of all CyberGFX supported graphic board to use Photogenics with milions of colors, new paintmodes, GIO (graphic input/output) loaders, plug-ins, Scanner drivers, Support for plug-in type modules (effects), PCHG (Palette Change Hires) support, a 'datatype.gio', a new multiple- positionalbe-distortable-layers system etc. Almathera is also working on a new version of "Video Creator CD", the companie's very populer multimedia sofeware. NTSC is one of the major new features.   Almathera Systems Limited Southerton House Boundary Business Court 92-94 Church Road Mitcham, Surrey CR4 3TD ENGLAND Phone: (081) 687 0040 Fax: (081) 687 0490 EMail: almathera@cix.compulink.co.uk EMail: jralph@cix.compulink.co.uk for questions - The Amiga music package OctaMED version 6.0 is under development. - Sandra Woodruff of the Amiga game company Happy Puppy Software announces the companie's intereset in publishing Amiga games. More information can be obtained from the WWW Page: http://www.power.net/users/HappyPup/amiga/ - A new version of ParNet, the low cost Amiga networking solution has been developed and is due to immediate release. - A Linux/68k X-driver for the DMI Resolver graphics board is currently under development. DMI Resolver is a graphicsboard based on the TMS 34010 processor. Unlike most of the new graphicsboards DMI board has a real-processor on the graphicsboard, that has its own addressspace etc. The board carries both DRAM (for code) and VRAM (for the display). The board can do upto 2048 x 2048 in 256 colors if you got enough VRAM installed. - Joshua Galun, Editor in Chief of Amiga Link, announces the availablility of a new on line magazine that will cover latest Amiga news, reviews, and previews. This magazing is published in AmigaGuide format. To have the issue sent to you by email, mail amigalink-request@ramiga.cts.com And in the message type: ADD "your email address", NOTE: Your e-mail address should not be in quotes. For example, if your address is John@ix.net, you'd type ADD John@ix.net in your message. You can also find Amiga Link using a WWW browser such as Lynx or AMosaic at http://ramiga.cts.com - Lars Lindstrm has developed AmiSMS, an Amiga program for sending SMS (text) messages to GSM mobile phones. This program is currently under further development but the current version 0.91ß available for FREQ from 2:201/411 and the archive name is AmiSMS-0.91b.lha BBS: 08-59140072 - WWW Page: http://far0066.urh.uiuc.edu/aos/aos.html contains information about the new AmigaDos compatible Operating System that a group of developers are currently developing. - Jeff Blume of Stylus, Inc., one of the good Amiga developers in Colorado, USA, announces the Apr-95 release of the very long awaited vector based drawing package for the Amiga, Provector 3.0. The Pro-Pak includes ProVector 3, StylusTracer, PSImport, and RexxRequest. Suggested list price for the package is $299.95 US. For a limited time, the Stylus Pro-Pack will be available directly from Stylus, Inc. at an introductory price of $199.95. Registered ProVector 2.1 users who have also registered PSImport can upgrade to the Stylus Pro-Pack for $99.95. Registered ProVector 2.1 users without PSImport can upgrade for $129.95. A Power-Up offer has been established which allows owners of earlier versions of ProVector, Art Expressions, Professional Draw, DesignWorks, or Aegis Draw , to upgrade for $149.95. These special offers will only be available through June 30, 1995. Upgrade and power-up requests with a check drawn on a US bank, or international bank draft, should be sent to: att. Stylus Pro-Pak Upgrade Stylus, Inc. P.O. Box 1671 Ft. Collins, CO 80522 Phone: (303) 484-7321 along with registration numbers or proof of purchase as applicable. Please include $7.00 for domestic shipping of new purchases; $10.00 for Canada and Mexico; $20.00 for all other international destinations. Include $5.00 for domestic update shipping; $10.00 for international update shipping. Colorado residents must include sales tax. ProVector version 3.0 features among others: - OS 2.04+ only but will take advantage of WB2.1 and WB3 features - AGA support - Good looking, easy to use, and much improved 3D user-interface with 2.04+ look and feel - Using the ASL standard requesters and other standard bits - Improved tool control - Gradient fills - Object shearing & warping - Object blending (morphing from one object to another) - Improved text support - LightWave file exporting - Export Adobe Illustrator (all versions) - StylusTrace, a dedicated high quality auto-tracing program (converts bitmapped images into structured drawings) much better (faster, more accurate, more features) than the autotracing used by other programs on Mac/Amiga/IBM/Unix. - Extensive online help system using standard AmigaGuide - Support for all knwon Amiga graphic boards/accelerators - Stylus has worked close with SOFT-LOGIK to make the all new ProVector a good completation for PageStream 3.0, the king of DTP programs. for newcommers to vector based drawing softwares and ProVector, version 2.1 of this excellent program features: - ProVector has a very complete and exellent Arexx interface and is fully programmable and extendable through Arexx As complete as you could want. You can do anything via ARexx that you can via the interface, and more. You can manipulate ProVector's internal data structures fairly directly , create your own custom object types (a physicist customer has created Feynman diagram objects, for example), create your own custom object operations, etc. This in one of the most configurable Amiga software, since it has a very full featured ARexx implementation for user customization and communication with other programs. The package includes many useful ready-made ARexx macros. - ProVector comes with 2 HP-GL driver which can be and has been used to drive various sign cutting engines (vinyl cutting) like most Roland plotter. The IFF-DR2D format is directly supported by many curring devices like Sign Engine. In addition to the tiling HP-GL driver, another feature of ProVector that sign-cutters have found very useful is the floating point math version of ProVector. Tiling of large pages to multiple output pages allows you to make VERY large signs, page sizes, like 15 miles x 15 miles :-) - The input/output formats are Encapsulated PostScript (true PostScript editing), EPS (Encapsulated PostScript) created on all the personal and workstation computer platforms, IFF-ILBM (including 24-bit, ANTI- ALIASED ILBM), HP-GL, Illustrator/EPSF, Multiple Layers support for IFF-DR2D (Amiga standard format for structured drawing developed openly and in cooperation with the Amiga community by Stylus). It can also print to any Preferences-supported printer. The postscript handling in ProVector is remarkable. It can save PS or EPS to PAR: SER: or a file. ProVector can be used for drawings to include in LaTeX documents and it works great. Specially because it provides the drawing with a correct BoundingBox (one that adjusts to the drawing) so dvips can position the figure correctly. That kind of data import capability is really useful when integrating the Amiga into today's work environment, an environment filled with a variety of computers running a wide spectrum of software. - Very fast freehand drawing tool - Very flexible spline tool - Other tools for boxes, ovals, polygonal shapes, fill control, line control, text, etc. - Multiple projects open on-screen at one time. Multiple drawings are open in separate windows and cut and paste between them is supported - Cut-and-paste to the Amiga clipboard - 255-level Undo - One of the fastest Amiga program, optimized for speed even on slower Amigas. It uses less memory than any other vectorbased graphic package. - Text effects - Three version of the program for integer, floating point and 68020 and up processors) - ProVector uses amiga multitasking enviroment very effectively. For example, when redrawing a screen you can go ahead and select your next operation and the redrawing will be aborted. - It support 8 bit (256 color) per drawing out of 16 million colors via dithering. You can create custom fill patterns from any object. - It can rotate objets, text and also will "flow" text around any outline. You can rotate about any point you desire, as well as rotate with clone, rotate by fixed increment, etc. - It has Splines curves Bezier cubic splines. It also can interpolate curves from a polygon. It also supports elliptical arcs. - ProVector comes with a utility to convert PostScript Type 1 fonts to ProVector format, so you have quite a variety of fonts to choose from. AmyNews sidenote: We work with ProVector as well as many other structured drawing programs for many different platforms and we wish to mention that ProVector, assumimg that you can use it's exellent Arexx interface, is the fastest and most powerful structured drawing programs on any platfrom. We would like to rate the softwares that we use as follows: - ProVector, Amiga - Aldus Freehand, Mac - Adobe Illustrator, PC - Corel Draw, PC - MicroGraphx Designer, PC - Art Expression, Amiga If you need something for your technical drawings, something that can deal with EPS clipart created on any platform, something that will let you create your own using sophisticated structured drawing tools, something that will work with your other programs like Pagestream and FinalWriter, and that is actively supported and developed for the Amiga, you ought to look at ProVector. Stylus has been selling and supporting ProVector for years and is actively supporting and improving this software, and provids an excellent solution to people who need to work with structured drawing for things like video graphics, desktop publishing, technical drawings, and sign making. Stylus, Inc. P.O. Box 1671 Ft. Collins, CO 80522 USA Phone: (303) 484-7321 EMail: stylus@linden.fortnet.org EMail: jblume@bix.com - InLine Services is now shipping Aurora version 1.0, the all new moduler screen saver for AGA and OpalVision Amigas. Aurora features: - Modular blanking routines. - Modular retargetable display drivers. - Hotkey enabled preferences/configuration editor - Module variable editor with Arexx script - generation - Full Arexx interface - Optional Workbench status window - User defined inactivity period - User selectable screen resolutions - User selectable unblanking events - Multiple module variable definitions - NTSC/PAL timing - Screen resolutions of any installed monitor - System password protection - Unblanking Input Events using serial port A demo version of Aurora may be find at AmiNet. - Dr Greg Perry of GPSoftware announces the April 95 release of DirectoryOpus version 5.0. The new version is priced at $129 US and will be handled by the following companies: Germamy: Stefan Ossowski's Schatztruhe England: Wizard Developments USA: Micro R&D Australia: Small-Biz Software GPSoftware PO Box 570 Ashgrove, Qld Australia 4060 Australia Phone/Fax: +61 7 3661402 EMail: zzgperry@mailbox.uq.oz.au - The all new version 3.0 of Amiga Real3D will be released in the mid-april 1995. - A portable PowerPacker decruncher for people who have to unpack PowerPacker files (like SoundTracker modules) on Unix machines is now uploaded to AmiNet as ppunpack-1.0.tar.Z - Data Compression Technologies has just release a new version 1.1 of the new, powerful Amiga archiver LZX. The new version, in addition to all known buggs fixed, features: - The 68000EC version of LZX compresses about 5% faster. - The 68020/68030 version decompresses about 8% faster.   Data Compression Technologies 383 Lawrence Avenue West Toronto, Ontario M5M 1B9 Canada Phone: (416)-781-1501 FAX: (416)-781-1502 EMail: jonathan.forbes@canrem.com - The 24 bit paint package for the Amiga, XiPaint, is now available in a new version 3.1. MacroSystem Germany distribute this program. The US distributer for MacroSystem Germany is NoahJi's Inc. MacroSystem Germany Phone: 2302-80884 EMail: tdorn@xipaint.co.at Mailbox/Fax: ++43-1-2714549 NoahJi's Inc. 3591 Nyland Way Lafayette, CO 80026 USA Phone: (303) 499-1975 Fax: (303) 499-1979 BBS: (303) 969-8967 - A new buggfixed version 4.3a of the excellent communication package for the Amiga, term, has just been released. This new update patch is downloadable from AmiNet and features: - Fixed a bug in the review buffer code - Nonzero background colours no longer spell trouble when scrolling, refreshing and mucking with the terminal display - `term' now uses the "official" way to determine if there are any visitor windows open on its very own public screen - cleaned up all invocations of the MsgQueue routines - Some of the text editing fields had the maximum number of chars they should be able to hold set to 0 - The screen left edge snap is finally fixed - The hotkey panel text editing fields now automatically translate your keyboard input into hotkey specifiers - Recompiled the program using SAS/C 6.55 Olaf Barthel Brabeckstrasse 35 D-30559 Hannover Federal Republic of Germany EMail: olsen@sourcery.han.de - The very long awaited ScalaMM (king of multimedia applications) new version 4.0 is finally released. Scala As, R & D Wdm. Thranesgt. 77 N-0175 Oslo Norway Phone: +47-22-361338 Scala Inc., Research & Development 1 East Uwchlan Avenue, Suite 420 Exton, PA 19341 USA Phone: +1-610-363-3350 - Electronics Art has just released the very long awaited DeluxePaint all new version 5.0. Among other new features, Electronic Arts mentions: - ARexx, Full command set, recordable and saveable macros - 24-Bit RGB Support in any screen mode. 24 Bit Backing Store - 24 Bit data creation, editing, loading, saving - Multiple Palette Animation, Every frame can have a separate palette - Variable Rate Animation, Every frame can have a custom frame rate/ pause - Natural Media, Textured backgrounds and media libraries for painterly and illustrative looking drawing and animation - Texturing, Media libraries - Used in conjunction to create naturalistic art - Camera Moves, Automatic Camera Pan/Zoom animation creation animations - Gradient Translucency/Fade, Create gradient translucency fades - AnimBoard(tm), Print animation storyboard in multiple layouts - Soft Edge Airbrush, New editable Airbrush has a natural look and feel - Creation and editing of larger than screen animations - LightTable Enhancements, multi levels of dim, user defineable - Move Requester Enhancements, Key Frame Animation, Animated Fades Priced at $150 US, the upgrade for registered owners of versions 4.X is $79 US. - The new real version 1.26 of ASM-One is under development and is to be released soon. - There are a lot of falsk rumoures around about how fast a pentium can render a pictures using LightWave. A Motorola 68060/50 MHZ is 20% to 30% faster than an Intel Pentium 90 MHZ. At the latest CeBIT show they demonstrated it. An Amiga equipped with a Cyberstorm 68060/50 MHZ run LightWave faster (55 sec for the test frame) than the Pentium 90MHZ (70 secs for the same frame). - Kermit Woodall of Nova Design, Inc. annouces development of an upcoming free upgrade to the ImageFX version 2.0, the Amiga Image Processing software. The new version will feature: - Enhanced Toaster support - previews, etc. - Blue/Green Screen Compositing - Full control, soft edging with variation, image processing-can create alpha channel mask and key out. Can composite to self, or put out key and matte. Can protect foreground colors. - Support for Primera Pro, Picture 310 Fargo printers. - Film grain, sparkle effects. - CyberGraphics 24-bit windowing previews. Nova Design, Inc., 1910 Byrd Avenue, Suite 214, Richmond, Virginia 23230 USA Phone: (804) 282-6528 Fax: (804) 282-3768 - The very long awaited SAS C Amiga Developement package version 6.55 is now finally released. This patch may be found in AmiNet. The new version features (summary): - SE will now optionally display a C file in multiple colors for the different token types. You can select the foreground, background, and style (bold, italic, underline or normal) for each of the following nine catagories: Plain Text, C Comments, C++ Comments, Double quoted strings, Single quoted strings, Numerical constants, Keywords, Identifiers, and Preprocessor Statements. There are two new menu items to control this in the Configuration Window. Colorize C Files - when set will cause all new files opened that end in .c* or .h to be colorized. Changing this will not effect any windows currently open in SE. Colorize C Prefs - will bring up another window and allow you to change the display attributes for any of the nine catagories. - A new profiler has been added that works like the SPROF profiler, but provides a graphical user interface to the profiling process. - Example code is provided in SC:EXAMPLES/AMIPROC that forks a subprocess with its own near data section. This will allow you to share code between processes but still use external data in each subprocess. - Example code is provided in SC:EXAMPLES/MOUNT that mounts and dismounts a file system node on the system list WITHOUT using the AmigaDOS Mount command. This will allow you to code a file system as a regular C program, invokable from command line or workbench. Since it's a regular process, it will be able to use printf() or other library I/O and be easily debuggable with CPR in any usual fashion. - Three new messages have been added to the C compiler: 188, 189, and 113. - Built-in preprocessor symbols (like _SHORTINT, _UNSCHAR, etc.) were not added to the GST in previous versions. In 6.55, they are added. - The built-in memcpy function can copy certain structures more efficiently now since the compiler retains more information on the alignment requirements of the structures. This also benefits structure assignment and call-by-value. - The layout of bitfields was inadvertently changed between 6.0 and 6.50, which meant that structures containing bitfields were incompatible between the two versions. Bitfields now use the 6.0 method, with the exception of bitfields of size :0. :0 bitfields exhibited a bug in 6.0-6.3 and added extra unusable bytes to the structure. 6.55 bitfields do not add these extra bytes. Note that the bitfields in 6.51 and 6.55 are identical; this change only affects users upgrading from 6.50. - The compiler now defines a preprocessor symbol __AMIGADATE__. This preprocessor symbol resolves to a datestamp string in the format required for the AmigaDOS VERSION command. The format is "(dd.mm.yy)", where dd is the day (1-31), mm is the month (1-12), and yy is the year. __AMIGADATE__ is available from both C and C++. Version 6.51 had some bugs in the __AMIGADATE__ processing which have been fixed for this patch release. - The macros for some functions defined in the C header files are now not defined if compiling C++. They conflicted with the names of some member items of C++ classes in or . Problem functions are /index(), /min(), max(), /open(), read(), write(), close(), /abs(). Many of these have alternate names using preceding underscores that can be used instead. - The priority of the autoinit functions for utility.library and the various Commodore math libraries were changed from 250 to 100 in versions 6.51 and 6.55. This allows the autoinitializer for the SPROF and GUIPROF profilers to use utility.library if it is compiled with UTILLIB. - And more new features + all known buggs are now fixed. - Nino Brunori of the Visionary Unlimited is currently developing Coleco/ ADAM computer Emulator. AmyNews will inform you when the release version is shipping. For more information please contact: BBS: USA (305) 456-0126 EMail: pday@gate.net - Due to the populer demand; Blittersoft in England is the European distributors for Utilities Unlimited (Emplant) products and UK Support for Village Tronic (Picasso II) Phone/Orders: +44 (0)1908 261466 Phone/Tech/Queries: +44 (0)1908 261477 Fax: +44 (0)1908 261488 BBS: +44 (0)1908 261499 Compuserve: 100523,2224 EMail: plesurf@cix.compulink.co.uk - Endicore Technologies Inc. is selling Workbench printer driver for the Epson Stylus Color printer. Endicore Technologies Inc. P.O. Box 29000 #355 San Antonio, TX 78229 USA Phone: 1-210-650-4988 EMail info@endicor.com - Tahoe Software, Etc. announces the release of QuickText, the interactive desktop video program designed to easily develop and display almost any type of graphic screen, including titles and credits, pictures, and even animations. Other features include full ARexx support, auto screen sequencing, on-screen timer, text and numeric variables, a recordable & replayable "doodler", and an easy-to-use point-and-click interface. QuickText has been used for 6 years in a "down-stream" computer with a simple genlock in a daily, live newscast and in taping sports events for local TV cable. It can be used as an overhead projector, reader-board, silent pager, or teleprompter. Soon to be released, QuickText PRO will feature remote-control via modem, time-of-day slots, and tiled backdrops. You can get a FREE demo from Tahoe Software, Etc., or from the Aminet biz/demo/QuickTextdemo.lha Tahoe Software, Etc. PO Box 9236 South Lake Tahoe, CA 96158 USA Phone: (916) 541-0873 Phone: (916) 649-8935 - The UK company Helios Software has just released a new version 6.06 of HeliOS Amiga, the interactive programing language. HeliOS Software 163 Huthwaite Road Sutton-in-Ashfield Nottinghamshire NG17 2HB England Phone: 01623-554828 - The good people at Nova Design, Inc. has just released the ImageFX 2.0 developers kit. ImageFx is by far the best image processing software for the Amiga. Developers kit is available through Nova Design, Inc. or AmiNet (ifx20sdk.lha). Nova Design, Inc., 1910 Byrd Avenue, Suite 214, Richmond, Virginia 23230 USA Phone: (804) 282-6528 Fax: (804) 282-3768 - Andreas M. Kirchwitz has upgraded Urban D. Mueller C-Shell to version 5.40. C-Shell is a replacement for the AmigaDOS command line interface. C-Shell features many builtin Unix-like commands, very fast script language, filename completion, command-name completion, comfortable command line editing, pattern matching, AUX: mode, object oriented file classes, abbreviation of internal and external commands, support for multiple users, ease of installation and use, and online help for all commands, functions and various subjects. The new version features: - Fixed error message for builtin command "copy": if no special error message was available, always the string "(no mem)" was output. - New placeholders "-1" and "-2" for builtin command "window". - Increased maximum value for window dimensions from 1023 to 32767 for builtin command "window". - Environment variables LINES and COLUMNS override window bounds from Amiga console.device. (if env vars are set, no CSI sequence is sent) - Builtin command "mem" now shows size of largest available memory block. - Various minor changes/enhancements to existing commands. - Miscellaneous minor bug fixes. The new version of C-Shell is located in AmiNet. - Good news. Softwoods very long awaited program, FinalCalc (FC), the high-end spreadsheet that aims at providing the Amiga with something to compete with the top spreadsheets in the 'outside world' is in it's final development phase. - Tomi Ollila of Network Solutions Development, Inc. has released a new free uppgrade patch version 4.2 for the AmiTCP version 4.1. AmiTCP is a full TCP-IP implementation. It can be both client and server. EMail: Tomi.Ollila@nsdi.fi - A new version 1.5 of the awesome all new swedish text editor FrexxEd is released. Version 1.5 features: - Danish users are now able to register in Denmark using danish currency - Rexx/ShowFPL.rx by Edd Dumbill is an *EXCELLENT* tool for all of you out there, who are not quite certain of which FPL programs to execute and which you shouldn't execute at startup. Try it! - Visible is appended to the top of the default file to make executions of it look much better after FrexxEd is started. - MenuSelect is a new exception that occurs when a menu item is selected. - New functions: "GetFileList()" , "MenuRead()" and "MenuDelete()" - The execute file requester now remembers the directory. - Functions.guide now has the node-names without the 'node_' prefix - GetByte(column, line) returns the byte position of the given parameters or the current position. Like GetCursor() but the other way around! - MenuAdd() now accepts optional coordinates where to add the menu item! - New 3D style sliders while on screen. - WindowToFront() with parameter -1 makes a WindowToBack - ExecuteFile() now accepts a file pattern to be executed - The 'copywb' setting is removed, the function CloneWB() is to be used to copy the public screen information to the FrexxEd settings. - An 'R' in the status-line shows if the buffer is read-only - The screen will beep if you try to edit a read-only buffer - FlipComment.FPL is made to "Flip comments around C-lines" - Addition of the so far pretty simple FPL debugger 'FPLdb' to the FrexxEd:bin/directory as well as an FPLdb.doc file. That file improves FPL debugging capabilities. - FrexxEd now allows buffer executions to export/cache FPL programs. That means you can write your FPL program in a buffer when debugging it. Re- executing the same buffer will make FrexxEd first flush the old program and then run the buffer again. - WordWrap.FPL is updated. It doesn't leave any trailing spaces at the end of lines any more. Requested by Svante Hedin. - Update the docs. New chapters about macros appeared and updated the regular expression chapter - New version 1.1 of the fpl.library - New set of FPL programs: - DeleteSpaceEOL.FPL: An entirely new beast. This scans and removes white spaces at the end of lines before saving them if the toggle buttons says so. - RememberView.FPL: Make FrexxEd remember the view positions when "amiga 1" is pressed. "amiga 2" restores the views back as they were! - ISpell.FPL: ISpell interface - CheckLinks.FPL: Amigaguide document link control - GotoLabel.FPL: Collects all assembler labels in a list and lets the user select one to jump to. A poor man's 'ETags'!! - LoadSaveProject.FPL is now updated. - Save As... now uses a "save-style requster". - SASC.FPL.README has more information. - ResizeView() now accepts a buffer ID parameter. - top_offset is a new setting (info variable). If contains the line of the window the current view starts at. The variable is writeable. - Activate() accepts a new parameter: buffer ID of the buffer that the new view should originate from. - ReplaceMatch() now accepts two new additional parameters: range and flags. - ETags.FPL and the etags archive was added. A major help tool to any programmer using FrexxEd. - Escape is now equivalent to 'q' in replace prompts. Request. - And all known bugs are fixed. The crippled SHAREWARE version may be doenloaded from AmiNet. - Utilities Unlimited International, inventer of the Amiga Emplant technology is now shipping e586DX (IBM PC) Emulation Module. The e586DX package came with a replacement GAL chip. Due to complications in trying to obtain several different BIOS licenses, UU have decided to write their own BIOS, which is currently being worked on. Until the UU BIOS is released, users will need to find a suitable BIOS. You can use any FLASH ROM upgrade (a BIOS image) with the e586DX emulation. Utilities Unlimited, Inc. 1641 McCulloch Blvd. Suite #25-124 Lake Havasu City, AZ 86403 USA Phone: (602) 680-9004 Phone: (602) 453-6407 Fax: (602) 453-9767 BBS EMail: jim_drew@cryo.rain.com - UseNet EMail: j.drew2 - GEnie - Black Belt Systems is currently working on a EGS version of the companies populer image processing package ImageMaster R/t. Black Belt Systems 398 Johnson Road RR1, Box 04272 Glasgow Montana 59230 USA Phone: 406-367-5509 - A new version 2.06 of Xv 3.10a, a MUI application that is the Amiga port of Xv for the Xwindow system is now uploaded to the AmiNet. It displays and manipulates images in GIF, JPEG, TIFF, PBM, PGM, PPM, X11 bitmap, Utah Raster Toolkit RLE, PDS/VICAR, Sun Rasterfile, BMP, PCX IRIS RGB, XPM, Targa, XWD, PostScript, and PM formats on workstations and terminals running the X Window System. This is an excellent piece of shareware program. - Amazing Comuting, the leading US Amiga magazing will restart publishing the long awaited Amazing Comuting's TECH magazing soon. This is a very welcome news to all Amiga programmers. More info about AC's TECH in a later issue of AmyNews. PIM Publications Inc. Currant Road P.O. Box 2140 Fall River, MA 02722-2140 USA Phone: 1-508-678-4200 Phone: 1-800-345-3360 (Toll free US and Canada) Fax: 1-508-675-6002 - The new and complete CanonDisk version 3.01 is now uploaded to AmiNet. The package contains excellent printer drivers for most Canon printers. It also contains the unregistered version of CanonStudio, IFF printing software for use with these drivers. The disk is free, and you can register CanonStudio for $35. - Gary Huber, President of Questar Productions announces the availability of version 1.1 of the World Construction Set. The new version does, among other improvment, feature "Contour", a new map drawing style in the Map View Module. When selected it will give you a real contour map presentation. It works best at map scales larger than 2. The contour inteval is set by the Exag field in the Map View Control window. It is the same interval as is used for the "Multi" gradient drawing style. The units are in meters. It is sometimes difficult to see the Interactive elements (Camera, Focus, Haze, Sun) in Map View against one of the gray-scale topographic backgrounds. Contour style lets you see some of the elevation information while clearly letting you see the Interactive elements. This can be a big help when laying out key frames for an animation. For uppgrade information and ordering please contact: Questar productions 1058 Weld Co. Rd. 23 Brighton, CO 80601 USA Phone: (303) 659-4028 EMail: garhuber@burner.com Look what Amiga World reviewer write about World Construction Set: ______________________________________________________________ |~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| ____| Belonging to a specialized group of programs commonly known |____ \ | as landscape makers / terrain renderers, World Construction | / \ | Set (WCS) is arguably the most powerful and complex package | / ) | on the Amiga or any other personal computer platform | ( / |______________________________________________________________| \ /_______)~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~(_______\   Another Amiga program that outperform anything on any other platform. Go Amiga Go .... - Prolific, Inc. is working on new versions of the companie's PCB layout programs Pro-Net and Pro-Board. The new versions are reported to be much faster. More information about these new releases in a later issue of AmyNews. - The very long awaited telser.device is now released. telser is a modem simulator over a TCP telnet/rlogin connection. It simulates basic modem commands, so you can use telecommunication programs over a network connection. To your comm program, it thinks it's talking to a modem. Terminal emulation, file transfers, scripting, etc. are all handled by your comm program. Connecting to a host is as simple as typing "ATDT abc.edu,23" or even simpler if you add the host to your comm's phonebook. telser supports most of the telnet/rlogin negotiation commands and options. For example, you may elect to notify the remote host on changes to your terminal emulation type, and window size. An intuitive "gadtools" graphical user interface is supplied to control your connections. You also have the option to automatically connect to a host after starting up your comm program. Instant logins at the click of a button! telser can also run in host mode, which means it would accept incoming telnet/rlogin calls. Calls may be tracked by telser's caller ID feature. You can easily set up a "multi-line" BBS over the internet! telser is capable of unlimited device units, which means you can have unlimited incoming and outgoing connections. It supports both TCP/IP packages on the Amiga, namely AmiTCP (tested with 3.0b2 and 4.0/4.1) and AS225r2. A demo version of the package may be downloaded from AmiNet. EMail: samy@sfu.ca - The New Meeting Pearls CD-ROM Volume II is to be released very soon. - A new version 2.9 of the excellent full featured QWKMail offline message reader for the Amiga, `AmiQWK II', is now uploaded to the AmiNet. AmiQWK II from version 2.9 is a freeware program. - Digita International has just released a free patch that will uppgrade DataStore, the Amiga personal database manager, 1.0 Release 1 to Release 2 version 1.0r2. - Syndesis Corporation is selling "SYNDESIS 3D-ROM", a CDROM collection of more than 500 3D models, all present in AutoCAD DXF, 3D Studio, Wavefront .obj, Video Toaster LightWave and Impulse's Imagine PC/Amiga formats. It's also got more than 400 tileable, wrappable texture maps. It includes a fully indexed, cross-referenced catalog of the objects. The 3D-ROM is a demonstration of the translation abilities of InterChange Plus, Syndesis's system for converting between 3D file formats. InterChange Plus translates between AutoCAD DXF, 3D Studio, Digital Arts, Wavefront, Swivel, Sculpt, VideoScape, LightWave, Imagine, CAD-3D, PAGErender and Vista DEM formats. Soon to come is support for StereoLithography, Macromedia 3DGF, Super 3D, Alias StyleGuide, Topas, Softimage, Inventor and Vertigo formats. All material and hierarchy information is preserved as best as possible. This ISO-9660 disc is fully accessible from Atari, MS-DOS, Macintosh, Amiga and Unix workstations. Syndesis Corporation P.O. Box 65 235 South Main Street Jefferson, WI 53549 USA Phone: (414) 674-5200 FAX: (414) 674-6363 EMail: 76004.1763@compuserve.com - A new version 3.0 of VMM, the excellent virtual memory manager for the MMU equipped Amigas is now released. The new version includes the ability to swap out program code, memory tracking, better MMU support, an ARexx port and some other new features. Email: apel@physik.uni-kl.de - Those of you who are using Hydra Systems Ethernet board, should call Hydra Systems to get a new SANA-2 compatible hydra.device for the board. Hydra Systems Wyndrushe House Red Lane Kenilworth CV8 1PB England Phone: +44 203 473333 Fax: +44 203 473333 - Fourth Level Developments announces the release of PFS, Professional File System for the Amiga. PFS in it's current HardDrive version 12.1/12.2 supports HardDrives of up to 2 giga bytes and autobooting. The latest Floopy version is still version 9.5. ProfessionalFileSystem features: - Read and write operations: upto 2 times faster - Directoryscan: 10-20 times FFS, 3 times FFS-DC - Delete/rename/protect etc: 10-20 times faster - Full AmigaDos compatibility - Better faulttolerance - Parralel access almost without performance loss - Disks NEVER get invalidated Fourth Level Developments 31, Ashley Hill Montpelier Bristol BS6 5JA England Phone: (+44) 0117 955 8225 Fax: (+44) 0117 955 9157 E-Mail: pfssales@flevel.demon.co.uk - Parcon Software announces the release of LogicBBS version 1.0. LogicBBS is a Bulletin system with a wide range of functions, supporting 33 nodes , with support of 65535 message & file base areas. The system is based on the Ami-Express method of working with setups and message/file areas, and 95% of all doors used with Ami-Express can be used with LogicBBS. Supports extracting of file_id.diz in filebase, uses extra tasks to multitask the extract / checking process. Files are being examined during upload process, saving the users time waiting for system to validate files. All configuration is done using ASCII textfiles and can be edited using normal text editors. ARexx, C, and Assembly programming support + developer documents are included in the package. Priced at $75 US, the package may be oredered from: Parcon Software Michael Pendec Islandshoejparken 14, 3.tv. DK-2990 Nivaa Denmark - Amigo Business Computers of East Northport, New York has announced two PCMCIA products for the Amiga 1200 and 600 computers. The Amigo PCMCIA Ethernet Adapter is designed to provide ethernet local peer-to-peer net-working on the PCMCIA slots of the A600 and A1200. The adapter works with Amigo's network software and adapters from CBM (A2065) and Elastic Relality/ASDG. The Amigo PCMCIA Serial Communications Adapter is designed to add a serial port on the PCMCIA slots of the A600 and A1200. The package comes with software which provides additional serial ports for modems, credit card readers, motion detectors, printers, touch screens, etc. Amigo Business Computers 192 Laurel Road E. Northport NY 11731 USA - Black Belt Systems is selling "BOARD MASTER", a PCB board layout software. Priced at only $39.95 US, "BOARD MASTER" features full auto router, etc. Black Belt Systems 398 Johnson Road RR1, Box 04272 Glasgow Montana 59230 USA Phone: 406-367-5509 - Pino Aliberti announces the release of "Mail Manager" version 1.0, the all new fully Integrated Tosser/Scanner/Editor/Tick Processor for Points and Nodes. The public version is available through and features: - Is Faaaaaaaast. Up to 3 times faster than Spot or EMS. - Is easy to configure. - Is fully localized ( Kickstart 2.1 or higher). - Is able to manage Tick Files. - Is able to manage Echo File Attached. - Is able to automatically create new Echo Areas. - Is able to manage 4 different types of message bases. - Is able to manage 3 different types of Mail Packets. - Is able to use full 5 dimensional addressing. - Has a powerful ARexx interface. - Has a powerful OnLine Help. - Has a powerful Threads management. - Has a powerful NetMail Routing management. - Has powerful Search/Sort/Show functions. - Has powerful Quoting routines. - Supports multiple character sets. - Supports the Nodelist and the Userlist. - Uses fast Memory Pools functions. - Uses fast asynchronous I/O functions. - Is a MUI Application - and much more Pino Aliberti 2:335/602.2@fidonet 39:102/10.0@amiganet aliberti@maui.nervous.com - Oregon Research is currently developing an updated version 1.1 of, TERMITE, the state of the art communication package for the Amiga. The new verion will among other improvments sport more AREXX commands, much faster ASCII Send etc, a print screen function.   Oregon Research 16200 S.W. Pacific Hwy., Suite 162 Tigard, OR 97224 USA Phone: (503) 620-4919 FAX: (503) 624-2940   - Tensor Productions announces the availability of CyberScape version 2.5. CyberScape software is currently being used on commercial and research VR projects around the world. It is a cost-effective and non-intrusive alternative to the more expensive and cumbersome goggle/glove VR systems. CyberScape uses the "projected reality" metaphor by which the person or subject is immersed in the virtual world through real-time video input - the same metaphor used in VIDEOPLACE and VIDEODESK systems by Myron Krueger and Mandala (R) systems by the Vivid Group. CyberScape is a script-based, event-driven, multi-threaded authoring software that takes advantage of a physically based 2D animation system. For example, a complete two-team volley ball experience can be constructed with only about 100 lines of code. CyberScape can be used for many types of applications like Interactive Music and Video Performances, Kinetic Scuptures and Cybernetic Arts, Interactive Learning and Training, Virtual Reality Constructions, Hypermedia Presentations, Interactive Video Games etc. CyberScape version 2.5 features: - Inputs: 2 video inputs (NTSC or PAL), PowerGlove in hi-res mode, 2 mouse inputs, 2 MIDI inputs, and 2 ARexx inputs. - Outputs: Serial device, Parallel device, MIDI output, ARexx output, and laser- disk player controls. - Collision Detections: Inter-object collisions, boundary collisions, multiple collision classes. - Object Dynamics: Velocity, acceleration, damping force, gravitational force, spring force, constrained string force, etc. - Event Triggering: Object grab and release, scene transition, timed sequence, arithmetic and logic operations. - Graphics: 640x400 (up to 20% overscan), 8-bit (256 colors) or HAM8 (256K colors), standard picture, brush, and animation files. - Audio: Standard sampled sound file, MIDI output, synthesized speech. - User Extensions: Linkable object library and interface source code included. New features since version 2.5: - Amiga AGA support - Real-time clock support - Laserdisk players support   Priced at $495.00 US for AGA version and $245.00 US for non-AGA version, CyberScape is available directly from: Tensor Productions (Joseph Chung Shen) 819 Gwyne Avenue Santa Barbara, CA 93111 Phone: (805) 683-2165   Tensor Productions following other products for the AMiga too: - MIDI-Mice: MIDI to Amiga keyboard/mouse events driver - VIDI-Mice: Live! (tm) to Amiga keyboard/mouse events driver - DIGI-Mice: PowerGlove (tm) to Amiga keyboard/mouse events driver   - State of the art text editing package GoldEd is now available in a new version 2.0.5.   - LHA v3.0 (the release version is probably named v3.1) is under beta testing. It features amoung other things, a very user configurable GUI and up to 30% better compression ratio. A little version 3.0, basically with the new engine but without the long waited GUI is to be released during Apr-95. The complete version will be avalable in 2Q95.   - AmiGadget Publishing Company announces the release of Panorma version 4. Panorama is a fractal landscape generating program that allow the user sculpt a landscape by applying a variety of fractal parameters to initial data that can be graphically edited by moving peaks and valleys around on the screen with the mouse. The program also imports data, including DEM (Digital Elevation Map) data for real places around the planet (or others). Panorma supports unattended operation for the creation of animations of any length, generated and recorded automatically, including automatic support for single-frame video recording. So, you can conduct a fly-by, or a fly-through, or follow a river as it meanders through lush, green valleys. Panorama can be entirely controlled and operated with software through its ARexx port. An extensive ARexx command structure provides control over everything Panorama does. The Arexx functionality also permits support of the VideoToaster and image processing software. Animation of finished landscapes can be achieved through an internal scripting language which includes the magic command "Tween" for easy scripting. Any feature can be animated, especially the program's awesome skies, and its waves and waterfalls (AmyNews: Amazing feature). Panorama can simply record a script as you work the program. You can then edit the script if you wish, to add Tween and other powerful functions. New new version 4.0 contains many enhancements and additional features over the previous versions. Panorama supports 24-bit pictures of any resolution, up to more than 8,000 by 8,000 pixels. The program will work directly to several of the available frame buffers - OpalVision, Retina, and Picasso - and Version 4.0 has much better support of AGA machines. In addition, you can create and save AGA-only picture formats from Panorama running on non-AGA Amigas. It has added fractal dithering and textures. These can be applied to anything in the program for which texture or dithering is appropriate - including tree leaves, water, clouds, etc. The program includes some features normally associated with raytracing, such as shimmering reflections of the sky in the waves. The program lists for $99.95 US. It is available direct from AmiGadget Publishing Company for an introductory price of $69.95. Updates from any previous version of the program are $35 US (+ $4 shipping), which includes the entire package: 5 floppy disks and the completely revised manual. Updates from any version of Genesis, add an extra $5.   AmiGadget Publishing Company P.O. Box 1696 Lexington, SC 29071-1696 USA   - The famous terminal communication software for the Amiga, term is now available is a new version 3.0. Please check AmiNet for availability.   - Jason Compton of the Amiga Report Magazin announces the inception of a new magazine to fill the need in the Amiga development and programming community. The first issue of AR Tech Journal that the new magazin is called is expected to be released in early April. The monthly magazine will be authored in AmigaGuide format and distributed along the same channels as Amiga Report-an E-Mailing list, FTP, World Wide Web, and a network of online services and BBSes worldwide. Subscription requests can be directed to subscriptions@oubliette.com. Correspondence to the editor, including articles for submission, can be directed to editor@oubliette.com.   Amiga Report Magazine 1203 Alexander Ave. Streamwood, IL 60107 USA Fax: 708-741-0689 EMail: jcompton@xnet.com   - Into the Light is a newsletter dedicated to LighWave and sowfware used with LightWave. It has tutorials, new product releases, tips & tricks, ways to output LightWave work, bussiness advise, product discounts, clasified, news. Subscription fee is $25 US for 12 issues. $15 US introductory price (good till Aprill 1)   Jose Burgos 262 92nd Street Brooklyn, NY 11209 EMail: IntoLight@aol.com   - Erik Quackenbush of Quackenbush announces the release of pcmcom.device, Amiga PCMCIA driver for modems & serial ports.   The pcmcom.device let's you use most PCMCIA modem and serial port cards in your PCMCIA equipped Amiga. The driver emulates the Amiga's 'serial. device'. Any communications program that supports alternate device drivers will work with the package. The driver supports the hardware FIFO buffers that are built into most PCMCIA modems to achieve error free communication at high speeds. The driver supports connect baud rates up to 115.2 Kbps. The package includes a preferences program that allows extended baud rate selection. The software supports the X-Jack modems from Megahertz, and the Smart Serial Port card from Smart Modular Technologies. Most other PCMCIA modems and serial port cards are also supported.   Quackenbush 524 Crooked Lane King of Prussia, PA 19406 USA Phone/Fax: +610 277 9006 EMAIL: equack@bix.com   - Jack Radigans awesome communication package for the Amiga, Terminus is now available in a new version 2.0E The unregistred version may be downloaded from AmiNet.   - German based company MAXON Computer Gmbh announces the new release of the companies relational database Twist.   - Barnie Productions (The Netherlands) announced the release of IPR, Image Processing Revelations version 1.0. IPR is a NEW, FAST and INTUITIVE image processing package with features not seen in any other image processor! Fast operation and the easy, intuitive control of the image processing are IPR's major advantages. - Supported file formats: BMP, GIF, IFF, JPEG, TIFF, PCX, TARGA, Datatypes (*), Multipic (*) (*) Special Amiga-libraries, allowing further loading of PBM, VLAB, YUVN, PGM, PPM, QRT, SunRaster, XIPaint, and others. - Internal screengrabber. - Support for all Amiga chipsets (screen modes PAL, NTSC, DblPAL, DblNTSC, VGA, MULTISCAN and others). - Easy-to-master, intuitive, consistent interface. - Color manipulations on one of (or a combination of) the red, green or blue components of the picture. - Color manipulations on specified color registers. - Real-time color manipulation. - Brightness, BroadCast, ColorFilter, Contrast, GammaCorrect, GrayScale, Intensity Range, Negative, Palette, Posterize, Arc, Fisheye, Flip, Mirror, Rotate, Shear, Sinewave, Pixelize, Spotlight, De-interlace, LineArt, Relief, Sharpen, Smooth, ColorReduction, Make 24-bit, Palette optimization, RenderHAM, CropRectangle, Scale, and more! - Each function has a built-in demo-mode, showing the user the possibilities of that function. - Extended, easy to access, fully supported AREXX-interface, clearly documented with lots and lots of examples. - Integrated viewer. - IPR comes with an extensive manual covering a lot of examples. Priced at $200 US the package can be ordered from:   Barnie Productions P.O.Box 172 2270 AD Voorburg The Netherlands   Phone/Fax: 31-70 3854173 EMAIL: barnie@xs4all.nl   - The US company Intangible Assets Manufacturing announces the availability of Amiga Envoy version 2.0, the least expensive and most tightly integrated commercial peer-to-peer networking software for the Amiga. New features include support of AmigaOS 2.04 DOS packet types (including notification and record locking), support for removable media, enhanced reliability and robust recovery, localization, AmigaGuide documentation, and more. List price for the version 2.0 is $59.95 US. Uppgrade fee for current Envoy user is $25 US Intangible Assets Manufacturing 828 Ormond Avenue Drexel Hill, PA 19026-2604 USA Phoe: +1 610 853 4406 Fax: +1 610 853 3733 WWW: http://www.iam.com/iam EMail: info@iam.com   - Stefan Ossowski announces the release of CDBoot version 1.02. CDBoot is a tool for booting almost any available CD32 game on any A1200 or A4000. CDBoot works with any AT/SCSI/PCMCIA CD-ROM drive and any available CD-ROM filesystem. It is possible to create config files for each CD, where a specific joypad emulation and language selection can be saved. The emulation supports up to four joypads, as planned by Commodore. Game high scores are saved to floppy or hard disk (if high score saving is supported by the game), with the nonvolatile RAM emulation. Priced at 69- DM, the package can be ordered directly from: Stefan Ossowski's Schatztruhe GmbH Veronikastr. 33 D-45131 Essen Germany Phone: +49(0)201-788778 Fax: +49(0)201-798447   - The US company Quadrant International has just released Cardcam, Amiga PCMCIA video capture card version 1.0. CardCam: VideoIn adds real-time video capture capability to PCMCIA equipped Amigas. CardCam captures 24 bit color images from any video source and saves them as standard Amiga IFF24 picture files for later manipulation with paint and image processing software. CardCam has sofware selectable composite and S-video inputs, and can capture from both PAL and NTSC video sources. CardCam can capture at full video resolution (640x480 NTSC w/overscan, 576 lines in PAL mode), and the software supports on-screen preview of live video. Quadrant International 65 Valley Stream Parkway Malvern, PA 19355 USA   Phone: +610 251 9999 Fax: +610 251 9020 BBS: +610 251 9723 Email: 75147.2243@compuserve.com   - Mike Witbrock and the rest of AMosaic, Amiga Mosaic crew are currently working on a new browser that will among other features incorporate forms and HTML3. There are currently 4 other browers under development too. IBrowse, Tesseract och WebLink, Lynx a text only WWW.   - The US company Elverson Puzzle Company has just released Elversound, Amiga PCMCIA audio Card. Elversound is a multi-function audio card for any PCMCIA equipped Amiga. It was designed by the same engineers responsible for the DSS8+ sound sampler. Hardware features include: 1. Stereo CD quality 16 bit sound. 2. Separate stereo line level and stereo microphone inputs. 3 Separate stereo line level and stereo headphone outputs. 4. Built in multi-channel stereo mixer. 5. Built in 4:1 ADPCM compression hardware. 6. Sampling rates up to 48KHz in 16 bit stereo. Selected software features: 1. Record, playback, and edit samples from disk or RAM. 2. Plays standard Microsoft Windows (tm) .WAV files. 3. Built in signal processing routines for special effects. 4. ARexx interface allows customization and integration with other software.   Elverson Puzzle Company P.O. Box 258 Elverson, PA 19520 USA FAX: +610 277 9006 EMAIL: equack@bix.com   - Urban D. Mueller (the father of AmiNet) announces the release of Aminet Set, the complete Aminet on four new CDs. The Aminet Set contains close to 4 gigabytes (more than 2 gigs compressed) of freely distributable software on 4 newly mastered CDs. There are 12500 archives from the following categories: 4600 Utilities 2600 Modules 1000 Games 1000 Communications programs 900 Graphics programs 800 Images ... and more. The AmiNet Set features: - Amigaguide based user interface, allows easy unpacking and viewing using a single mouse click. - Extensive search facilities. Finds words in descriptions or readmes, and outputs matches as an index that allows direct viewing. - Special support for the following categories of files: - Modules. Can be viewed and played from an index that is sorted by music style and subsorted by rating. - Images. Can be previewed in a database of thumbnail versions, and a double click on the thumbnail shows the full size image. - Games. Can be started using a single click from an index that lists all games that can be run on accelerated Amigas, with the best games on top. Degrading software started as needed. - Demos. As the games, they can be started using a single click. Demos with a quit function are listed separately. - Charts. A list of the most popular programs is on the CD, sorted by category. - Fish disks. You can find any of the programs on Aminet using the number of the Fish disk it can also be found on. All 1000 Fish disks are part of the Aminet CD. Priced at only $39.95 US, the package can be ordered from:   Stefan Ossowski Phone: +49-201-788778 Fax: +49-201-798447 Email: stefano@tchest.e.eunet.de Germany   Fred Fish Phone: +1-602-917-0917 Fax: +1-602-917-0917 Email: fnf@amigalib.com USA   - A new version 1.4 of the awesome all new swedish text editor FrexxEd is released. Here is the features list for FrexxEd: - 100% recursive undo, changeable undobuffer size and on/off toggle - Unlimited number of buffers/blocks/macros in memory - Unlimited line lengths and buffer sizes - 100% programmable, everything can be done by a script instead of Interactive - *very* C-like programming language (FPL) - Clipboard support, export to/import from any unit - Uses V39-style memory pools - v39 aware, uses V39 functions when available - appIcon/AppWindow support - window/Screen/Backdrop - File name extension aware icon usage - Supports locale library, 7 languages are supported at the moment - Easy macro record/edit/view/play/save/load - Customizeable look of any ASCII character (to i.e enable the inverse CED-look or the \xxx Emacs-look or...) - Programmable keyassigns, make any key do anything - Programmable mouseactions, make any mouse action perform whatever you want it to - Rectangular/column style block marks and block pastes - Programmable menustrip, make it contain whatever you please! - Supports XPK and PowerPacker compression/decompression and encryption/decryption. - Startup-script that loads any file into a running editor - >400K documentation in amigaguide format - Works just as good used with gfx hardware like Retina, GVP Spectrum, Piccolo, Picasso II, A2024, AGA, ECS or OCS... - ARexx port, capable of reading and writing ARexx variables! - A *LOT* of additional scripts that perform a multitude of different things. From mousedragging-style blockmarking, archive-flag removal when saving, center line, binary editor, snake game, incremental search, interactive C indenting and word wrap to generic assembler filters, bookmarks, backup, autosave and programs that easy interfaces RCS... - Supports file comments - Custom keymap support - Optional "safe save", save with temp name and then rename - Easily exchangeable images for icon creations/usage - Binary loading/editing/saving - Unlimited key sequence lengths - Ability to clone the public screen when opened as a window on such - Font sensitive GUI - Line number mode supported, start each line with the line number - Ability to replace/change the workings of any internal function through an advanced hooking procedure - Mailing list and other eletronic mail support o runs smoothly with virtual memory managers like VMM o search/replace history - CursorActive() controls the cursor visibility   Addition to the FPL programs: - Doubleclick on appicon generates an exception which does a WindowToFront() by default. - Full regular expression search/replace, Emacs/UNIX style. - RequstWindow() supports listviews sent as string arrays from FPL - Smaller and faster executable - fpl.library v10 with lots of new features (100% ANSI C style when dealing with the &&, || and ?: operators, built-in sprintf() and more). - Now supports backwards replace. - Time controlled function invokes! Once or repeated. - Doubleclick on appicon moves FrexxEd to front! - "YankBuffer" is now viewable/editable/controllable like any other named block buffer. - KeyPress() receives the FPL program assigned to a key sequence. - Sort() sorts the items in a string array. - ReplaceMatch() performs a sort of manual replace substitution. - Bsearch() binary searches in a sorted string array - Stcgfn() and Stcgfp() returns the file or path part from a specified file name string. - and much, much more...   - "Tecsoft Images", France announces the release of TVPaint, the professional and most powerful 24-bit paint package for the Amiga, version 3.0. Tons of new features are prommised. Tecsoft Images 19, Rue Dupont des Loges F-57000 METZ France Phone: (033) 87691950   - Data Compression Technologies has just release an all new Amiga packer called LZX. LZX is a brand new data compression program developed on and for the Amiga, sporting mind-blowing compression rates, and brain- staggering speed. LZX uses compression technology that is absolutely state of the art, and offers a compression/performance ratio superior to that of all other programs for the Amiga, as well as to all programs for ms-dos. Aming tons of features LZX sports File merging, a feature which enables compression to be increased, often very significantly, by allowing data from one file to be compressed using the knowledge of previous files in the archive. This feature, unique to LZX on the Amiga , often improves compression by 300% or more! Registred 68000-68060 Turbo Optimized version are available from:   Data Compression Technologies 383 Lawrence Avenue West Toronto, Ontario M5M 1B9 Canada Phone: (416)-781-1501 FAX: (416)-781-1502 EMail: jonathan.forbes@canrem.com   - The UK company Almathera Systems Limited has just released an update version 1.1 to it's wonderful paint and image manipulation package Photogenics. The new version features: - Toolbar Changes - Smear Smear is a new powerful effect. When selected, the standard drawing options will smear the picture rather than applying a paint effect. Unlike other paint effects (eg. Negative) Smear does not use the standard system of operation where you can rub-out your work with the right mouse button. Both buttons do the same during smear. If you have undo enabled you can use the Undo option from the menu to undo the LAST APPLIED smear operation. As smear affects the 24-bit data directly make sure you have a back-up of your image (either by cloning the buffer or by saving to disk) before you start using Smear! Smear uses the current brush, so different effects can be used with other brush types like Chalk Pastel. - Colour Picker. Previosly this had no image. - Blur Paint Layer A new option has been added to the Alpha/Paint Layer menu called 'Blur Paint Layer'. This option will 'blur' the edges of the selected paint (without needing to fix it). If you draw a solid shape like a filled circle it normally has sharp, unnatural edges. By choosing this option the edges of this (and any other unfixed paint) are blurred so they will blend into the background. - PCD.gio You can now load Photo .PCD files directly into Photogenics. Only the lowest three resolutions in .PCD (192x128, 384x256, and 768x512) are currently supported. This .GIO file loads and can automatically detect .PCD files - Close Workbench A new option to the settings menu, allows you to close workbench. Select 'Close Workbench' if you are running short of memory. - Tolerance Fill This has been renamed 'Fill Similar'. - Colours Window If you press the 'Colours' button in the palette requester, you can now access the Colours window. This lets you create spreads of colour, and also lets you see what palettes were saved with any images you may have loaded. - Greyscale The greyscale paintmode now has more options. Previously it had two different methods of calculating a greyscale picture. Now it has no less than eleven: Video Weighted, Simple Average, Brightest, Darkest, Median, Red Filter, Green Filter, Blue Filter, Cyan Filter, Magenta Filter, Yellow Filter - Brushes Four new brush types have been added to the program: - BallPen: Simulates a ballpoint ink pen. Like real pens the colours mix differently to normal paint. - Calligraphy: A simple angled nib calligraphy marker. - MarkerPen: Simulates a thick marker pen. Colour mixing works in a similar way to BallPen. - SprayCan: Spray can works like the airbrush but has a higher pressure and defaults to continuous mode. Useful for highlighting areas for image processing. - Clock and Memory Display - Opalvision There are now two Opalvision displayers included Opal_Low and Opal_ High. These replace the single displayer previously found in the program. Almathera Systems Limited Southerton House Boundary Business Court 92-94 Church Road Mitcham, Surrey CR4 3TD ENGLAND Phone: (081) 687 0040 Fax: (081) 687 0490 EMail: almathera@cix.compulink.co.uk   - We just recieved a fax from Advanced Systems & Software, AS&S, Germany, the maker of CyberVision and CyberStorm 68060 for the Amiga. The Amiga 4000 version of the CyberStorm is shipping now! The release date for Amiga 3000 (YES, IT'S TRUE) is mid Feb 95! Also SOON! This baby sports a massive 85 Mips even in it's 50 MHZ (currently shipping). The CPU is simply upgradable to the 80 Mhz version. The 80 Mhz 68060 will does apr. 130 Mips! To get an idea how FASSTTTTT this babies are consider that an Amiga 3000/ 25 MHZ 68030 does apr. 7-8 MIPS. A4000/25 MHZ 68040 does apr 18-19 MIPS. CyberVision 64, the fastest Amiga graphic board sporting S3 technology is also shipping now for all ZORRO-III Amiga. Phase 5 digital products development team (developer of Cyber products) , Official Motorola Beta Site Developer, is a leading technological developer in the AMIGA sector. This has already been demonstrated with products such as the Fastlane Z3 or the Blizzard Series. Here is complete release information for these 2 Cyber products: - CyberStorm Amiga accelerator system sporting 68060 CPUs from Motorala This util consists of several modules but each CyberStorm system contains a Carrier Board, a CPU Module and a Memory Board. The CPU module can be exchanged for another version at any time without having to change any of the other components. This concept guarantees optimal access speed and the greatest possible performance at each CPU speed. The CyberStorm System is not linked to any particular type of CPU. Processor modules with other than 680x0 processors can be installed at any time, as long as they are supported by the Amiga operating system. Wherever the future of the Amiga may lead, you can be assured that the CyberStorm will keep apace of technological advances. - CyberStorm Carrier Interface Board Inserts into the 200 pin Amiga Fast-Slot and contains ports for the CPU Module, Memory Board and the I/O Module. Fully asynchronous interface between the modules. Extremely fast programmable logic, selected A-Grade FCT circuit logic, high-class high density connector Slot for 68060 software Boot ROM (or Flash ROM) or Ethernet Boot ROM (used with the CyberStorm I/O Module) to boot up the computer from a network hard drive. - CyberStorm CPU Module: Optimally tuned to the processor used and its speed Prepared for CPU clock speeds up to 80 MHz. Active CPU cooling, uncoupled CPU voltage supply with 5 or 3.3 Volt Voltage control at 3.3 V for 68060 version. Bi-directional high speed buffering with expensive A-Grade FCT switching logic 120 pin high density port for Second Level Cache Module or other expansions. - CyberStorm Memory module Slots for 4 SIMM modules in 32 bit technology standard 72 pin modules, Sizes: 4, 8, 16 and 32 MByte per module, freely mixable, maximum configuration 128 MByte. Fully DMA capable memory, also supports Zorro3 DMA access. Fast 2-1-1-1 Burst Mode access when reading and 3-1-1-1 when writing at 25 MHz RAM speed with 60 or 70 ns RAM) achieving data transmission greater than 50 MByte/sec measured or effective value) Independent of CPU clock speed. The asynchronous interface concept also applies to the memory: the bi-directional buffer logic allows the CyberStorm CPU asynchronous access to the memory which operates at the AMIGA system speed of 25MHz. This principle makes the memory transparent to other system components which access it by DMA, and avoids possible problems that can arise with so-called local memory designs which, for example, are directly linked with a CPU clock. There is no principle speed disadvantage over designs which operate the memory at higher clock speeds, as 25MHz is the upper limit for memory access without wait cycles (even for 60ns fast D-RAMs), which is performed on the CyberStorm in Burst Mode Access. With a data throughput that is nearly independent of the processor frequency of up to 66.66 MB/s in Burst Mode Access even a CyberStorm System clocked at 25 MHz demonstrates clear acceleration, especially when working with large amounts of data. - CyberStorm I/O Module (Optional) Fast SCSI-II interface with internal and external 50 pin SCSI connector. Data transmission in the full address area using its own 32 bit DMA channel, FIFO buffered, bandwidth >30 MB/s. Asynchronous to 7 MB/s, synchronous to 10 MB/s data transmission on the SCSI bus with minimal CPU loading. The know-how gained from developing the Fastlane Z3 (the world's first 32 bit SCSI Controller for the Amiga) was used extensively in the design of the SCSI interface, which has mature driver and utility software amongst other features. Extensive software including CD-ROM Filesystem, dynamic caching software and various SCSI Tools. 10 MBit/s Ethernet controller. SANA driver for transparent linking to various network systems. High speed due to its FIFO buffered, 32 Bit DMA channel Coaxial (BNC) and Dsub15 ethernet connector (Thin Ethernet /Standard Ethernet). Serial high-speed interface RS232 with 115kbaud, with its own FIFO buffer has also been integrated in the I/O Module to guarantee problem-free operation of fast serial devices without data loss. - CyberStorm Cache Module (Optional) No further information currently available. The CyberStorm CPU Module also offers another High Speed Connector with direct processor connection through which, for example, cache memory and boards with second processors (e.g. DSPs) or other high speed expansions can be connected. All CyberStorm components are manufactured in Germany to the highest industrial quality in modern Fine Pitch SMD technology and are subjected to complete functionality test prior to delivery. A3000 and A4000T versions have limited modularity and expansion capabilities. - CyberVision 64, ultrafast 64-bit graphic acceleration system for Amiga: The CyberVision 64 satisfies the most demanding requirements on performance and system conformity because of its combination of an extremely fast 32 bit Zorro-3 interface, a 64 bit wide graphics controller and exceptional software. Based on the highly integrated graphic chip Trio64 from the renowned manufacturers S3, which integrates an expensive graphics processor, a complex 64 bit wide Blitter as well as a highly efficient 24 bit converter for D/A conversion, the CyberVision 64 can offer a video band width of 135 MHz. It will, therefore, support a variety of resolutions in True Color, High Color and 256 colours. The CyberVision 64 32 Bit Zorro3 interface is highly optimised and allows transmission rates from the AMIGA main memory to the graphic memory of up to 16 MByte/sec - an exemplary rate that sets new standards. Data transfers within the CyberVision 64 video memory are executed by the 64 Bit Blitter at speeds above 100 MByte/sec, practically in an imperceptible amount of time, resulting in extremely fast shifting operations, for example. Another special feature of the CyberVision 64 is its hardware support of Planar-to- Chunky Conversion which, with Amiga graphics cards, often takes up most of the time required for emulation/representation of the Amigamodes. This hardware solution is some 6-8 times faster than typical software solutions which considerably accelerates the emulation and representation of Amiga modes and especially the representation of 8 Bit graphics. Complementing this efficient hardware is excellent driver software which fully utilises the performance of the card for unusual system conformities. The CyberVision 64 screen modes are installed via the CyberVision 64 monitor files, are available via normal ASL- Requester (e.g. in screen mode in PREFS) as "normal" system resolutions, and for common applications operating under OS3.0 or 3.1 require no additional driver. The CyberVision 64 has an expansion bus through which additional cards such as JPEG or MPEG cards can directly access the fast video memory making the CyberVision 64 suitable for future developments. The combination of the attention that has been paid to necessary details, such as slipped through AMIGA video signal and integrated, loss-free electronic switching, default-monitor-timing on system start-up or simple expansion of the 2MB version to 4MB with common memory modules, with the usual high quality of phase 5 products will be able to satisfy even the most demanding user. Resolution Noninterlaced: up to 1280x1024 pixels in 8 bit, up to 800x600 pixels in 24 bit; Interlaced: up to 1600x1200 pixels in 8 bit, up to 1024x768 pixels in 24 bit. 135 MHz Video DAC Planar-to-chunky pixel conversion using special hardware (RoXXIer chip). Slip through Amiga signal with loss-free, electronic switching Digital video bus for optimal expansion (shared memory bus) with access to the video memory. System local software with Workbench emulation, Support Library, linking via monitor files CyberVision 64 screen modes including standard Amiga resolutions). For ordering information please contact your Amiga dealer or: Advanced Systems & Software, AS&S, Germany Tel: (69) 5488130 Fax: (69) 5481845 - A free upgrade patch for CanDo, the Amiga authoring software, version 3.003, is available directly throug Inovatronics, Inc. Inovatronics, Inc. 8499 Greenville Ave. Suite 209B USA Voice : (214) 340-4991 FAX : (214) 340-8514   - We are proud to include promised information about DraCo, the first real Amiga clone developed by MacroSystem GmbH Germany in this issue of AmyNews: DraCo fulfills the dream of an affordable, powerful, and professional video and graphics workstation. DraCo offers perfect quality animation recording, non-linear editing, and animation rendering. DraCo is not an Amiga. But you can run most of the Amiga hardware and software applications with astoundingly dramtic results. DraCo is an Amiga OS compatible computer that doesn't use the Amiga custom chip set. These chips are replaced with powerful software and hardware combinations. The blitter, for example, is replaced by the powerful NCR 53C720 chip which is used, for example, in the Warp Engine. DraCo is based around the Motorola 060 processor, UNIX and UNIX clone support are included as well. This workstatation is certainly the most powerful video and graphics computer in this price category. (priced in the same equipped A4000 range) Technical data: - Processor: Motorola 68060 - Operating System: Amiga OS & various UNIX Systems - Case: Full size tower - I/O: Fast SCSI-II with NCR 53C720 & Parallel Port - Slots: Two DraCo direct 32 bit interfacws dedicated for the Retina BLT and VLab Motion. The retina is standard in every computer, the VLab motion is optional. Five Zorro II slots for boards like the Toccata, Emplant, Ethernet, VLab Y/C, serial ports, additional parallel ports, etc. - Drive: Triple speed CD ROM drive standard, other SCSI devices optional - Graphics: DraCo Retina BLT with 120 Mhz pixel frequency and data rate of over 180MB/Second in 24 bit - Memory: 4MB standard, expandable to 128MB - Software Compatibility: All system compatible programs that runs on graphics cards like the Retina will work. - Hardware Compatibility: All hardware products that are custom chipset independent. This includes the Toccata, Emplant, etc.   - Todd Vierling announces that a gamma version 0.9.1 of AmiNIX, a new implementation of BSD UNIX is now released. It runs on any 680x0 series processor, and does not require either an MMU or FPU. It does not have the superstrict protection that NetBSD or Linux have, and is not designed for that; AmiNIX is designed for UNIX compatibility on few-to- one-user systems and for restricted remote use (via rksh and the like). AmiNIX is an ``extension'' that gives UNIX ability to AmigaOS. The release version 1.0 is under development. EMail: amigagod@grove.ufl.edu   - Powerful GUI-builder program for the Amiga, VisualArts, is now available in a new version 2.1. VisualArts allows you to actually DRAW a user interface to your program. New features in version 2.1 includes: - Amiga OS 3.0 compitable - More window types - Extended String gadgets support - 'Test GUI' function to preview your design in real time - Console window support - you can now add a console to your GUI - Speech - make your application talk, very easy! - Better code generation includes both WB2.1 and WB3.1 and automatically generates a makefile for your project. - Modifying your custom codes will not affect the GUI and you can make as much change as you like. - And more ... A demo verion is available in AmiNet.   - Hisoft of the UK is now selling "Squirrel", a SCSI2 PCMCIA interface that suports up to 7 SCSI devices allowing connection of up to 7 SCSI devices to the Amiga at the same time. A CD-ROM, a SyQuest removable drive, a DAT drive, a Magneto Optical and a Tape Streamer, all on-line and all available at any time. The Squirrel comes complete with SCSI software drivers, a host of useful SCSI programs including an audio CD player, a CD-to-HD sampler and easy to use SCSI drive mounting software. Fully tested with a wide range of SCSI & SCSI 2 peripherals, the Squirrel supports data transfer speeds of up to 1.3Mb/sec on a standard A1200 and reaches an incredible 3Mb/sec with a 68030-accelerated A1200. To complement the SCSI interface HiSoft has released a number of quality SCSI peripherals - including double-speed & triple-speed CD-ROM drives and 88Mb & 270Mb SyQuest drives; these packages are shipping now at very competitive pricing. The Squirrel features 'hot' plug and unplug meaning that it is feasible to remove and install the interface at any time and the Squirrel software will automatically unmount and mount devices. The package comes complete with a 50-way SCSI connector cable, full instruction manual, warranty/registration card and easy-to-install software. The Squirrel SCSI is available for the Amiga A600/A1200 and is priced 69.95 UKP (inc VAT) + P&P. - Those of you that are in need for a decent but low cost graphics tablet for your Amiga should take a closer look at "Tabby". It work on any desired screen size and is about 4"x5" (13x10cm). The driver software is surprisingly goo for the lowe price of the device and is capable of changing the sampling methods. Different methods affect the amount of jitter when the stylus is between cells. - The US company Quackenbush announces the release of pcmcom.device for the Amigas equipped with PCMCIA port. The pcmcom.device let's you use most PCMCIA modem and serial port cards in your PCMCIA equipped Amiga. The driver emulates the Amiga's 'serial.device'. Any communications program that supports alternate device drivers will work with the package. The driver supports the hardware FIFO buffers that are built into most PCMCIA modems to achieve error free communication at high speeds. The driver supports connect baud rates up to 115.2 Kbps. The package includes a preferences program that allows extended baud rate selection. The software supports the X-Jack modems from Megahertz, and the Smart Serial Port card from Smart Modular Technologies. Most other PCMCIA modems and serial port cards are also supported. Contact Quackenbush for ordering information: Quackenbush 524 Crooked Lane King of Prussia, PA 19406 USA   FAX: (610) 277 9006 EMAIL: equack@bix.com   - A new version of EGS-SpactraPaint is under development by it's auther, Pat Hager.   - Joosen Software Development is now selling a CASE package for the Amiga. This is compatible with companies windows version. Contact Christian Joosen, 'cjoosen@xs4all.nl' for further information.   - Wolf Faust announced that a new version of his higly professional ,Studio, Printer Software, "Studio Professional II" version 2.0 is released now. This version includes among other drivers, the HP 560C printer. Studio allows the user to print 24 Bit colors picture using any Amiga. The package includes a complete set of printer-drivers for all HP DeskJets, LaserJets, Epson and Canon printers, and utilities to print graphics like IFF, JPEG, Targa, GIF, etc. and it also contains a CMS (Color Management System). For ordering information please contact MacroSystem Germany or: arXon GmbH Assenheimer Str. 17 D-60489 Frankfurt Germany Phone: (69) 7896891 Fax: (69) 7896878   - Those of you who use Wacom ArtPad with your Amiga should call German Wacom BBS and download the new version of the software now available free of charge. Wacom BBS: (Germany) (213) 1120317   - The UK company Almathera Systems Limited is developing a new version of their best selling CD³² software "Video Creator CD" ,also compatible with all CD-ROM equipped AGA Amigas. The current version, priced at only £39.95 UK, allows you to create videos to be used with your favorite CD titles. Programs interface looks like Scala and is very easy to use. Videos are tracked down to the millisecond, and effects can be inserted using the editor at any point desired. Tons of effects are available, from the usual assortment of screen wipes and fades which are faster that you can imagine, to animations and plasmas, to "psychoflicker." There's no shortage, and the animation feature is impressive, allowing you to tile it on the screen in various combinations, including upside down and opposing. Effects can be overlaid for extra depth. FMV,Full Motion Video , providing you have the module and a disc to pull the FMV from, can be used in your video as well. The CD includes a complete set of materials that you will ever need in your video production. From stop signs to animations of houses to German phrases to pictures of exploding aircraft, there's a LOT of eye candy pre-installed. Loading is supported using AmigaDOS paths, meaning that you can pull whatever you like off of any valid device. You can test the outcome of effects while you're in the editor, incidentally. The setup ensures you'll never run out of possibilities and combinations. Almathera is olso offering regular newsletters for "Video Creator CD" registred users. There are notes in the newsletters suggesting using the Random Rave feature for parties, instant, effortless visual effects that will really fit the mood and even impress some people technically. Video Creator is a load of fun. It's flexible and powerful and very well supported. The new version will include much more outstanding effects and a lot more pictures. Contact Almathera for ordering information: Almathera Systems Limited Southerton House Boundary Business Court 92-94 Church Road Mitcham, Surrey CR4 3TD ENGLAND Phone: (081) 687 0040 Fax: (081) 687 0490 EMail: almathera@cix.compulink.co.uk   - The German company MacroSystem GmbH has developed the new version 2.3 of the SoftWare for Retina Graphics cards.The new version is faster and better compatible with AmigaOS version 3.1.   - Douglas Stockman, the auther of "Simple Stat Graph (SSG)", Amigas statistical and graphical data analysis program announces development of an all new version 2.0 that will among other features include multiple regressions, true 3-D graphs with real-time rotation and more. "Simple Stat Graph" currently in version 1.0a, requires 4 MB memory, a HardDrive and AmigaDos 2.04 or better. It supports all basic graph types and include one way ANOVA's. It comes with a 200 page manual and on-line AmigaGuide help. For ordering information please contact: Neil Palumbo P.O. Box 354 North Greece, NY 14515-0354 USA   - SoftWood is currently working on the next generation FinalWriter that will among tons of other features, implement proper import/export capabilities for documents created on the most populer programs on otehr platfrom. SoftWood's online support is expanding too. More SofWood news in a later issue of AmyNews.   - Utilities Unlimited International, inventer of the Amiga Emplant technology has released the new version 5.1 of the software for the Macintosh emulation module. The new version mainly fixes several small bugs in version 5.0. The uppgrade software is available through UU BBS or AmiNet.   - The excellent "Wolf Faust's printer drivers" package is now released in a new version 2.1. Now only the package allow usage of some new printers like CanonBJ series, but it addes print speed and total control of the Amiga's printer port.   - Digital Creations's John Botteri announces the offering of a new complete package, "SuperGen SX Studio" for the Amiga. Prices at $799 US, the package is the new low-cost, broadcast quality genlock, titling, paint and animation system, designed to work on all Amigas in both AGA and ESC modes, PAL & NTSC. It lets you overlay titles, create amazing animated boarders and graphics, and fade between any video source and Amiga graphic. SuperGen SX Studio consists of: - Stand alone, S-video version of the bestselling Amiga video peripheral of all time, the SuperGen genlock. - Innovision's Broadcast Titler, one of the Amigas most popular character generator. - Digital Creation's Brilliance 2.0, one of the Amigas's fastest and most powerful paint and animation system. Digital Creations 2890 Kilgore Rd. Rancho Cordova, CA 95670 USA Phone: (916) 344 4825   - The Smartplay crew has just released a new replacement program for SM, AccessiblePlayer v1.1. APlayer features: - Supports 33 different module formats. - Recognizes and unpacks 150 different cruncher types (using the Unpack.library. - Favourite Song System - Play samples by the keyboard while listening to the module. - Save samples, can be used to rip your favourite samples, even if you don't own the actual music program. - Can play modules from Fast memory, saving your sparesome Chip memory. - App-Icon and App-window. - Full commodity interface. Depending on your system. - Supports Lha files, including extract pattern. - Supports Public Screens. - Make your own favourite lists of modules with the APML system. - Early load system which kills the waiting time between the modules. - Full ARexx interface - All functions in the main window is accessible via hotkeys. - New players added in version 1.1: FTM, Whittaker, TFMX 1.5, Hippel, Hippel-COSO, PumaTracker, IFF-AIFF - RIFF-WAVE now support 16-bits samples. AccessiblePlayer is available through AmiNet.   - The US company "Micro R&D" is selling a super cooling kit for the 4000. The kit includes 3 fans and a premade wiring harness for easy installation. The cost for the kit is $60 US or you can send the cover to your machine to them and for $100 US they will install the fans onto your cover. Please contact George Graham of the US "Micro R&D" for more information about the kit. Micro R&D is also selling the best selling opto-mechanical Amiga mouse, Swifty 3-buttons, with lifetime guarantee. Micro R&D PO Box 130 Loup City, NE 68853 Phone: (308) 745 1243 EMail: ggraham@ios.com   - Intelligent Design Inc. annouces the release of Pretium, companie's new checkbook accounting software for the Amiga. Pretium is personal accounting package designed to organize finance quickly and efficiently. Attractive charts and graphs provide an at-a-glance view of the user's financial standing. Intelligent Design Inc. (IDI) 5742 Old Cheney Hwy, Orlando, FL 32807 USA Phone: (407) 382 0227   - Super DJC3 and Super LJ4 from Creative Focus will put your Amiga in the driver's seat of your Hewlett-Packard color printer. The Super DJC3 driver is compatible with all DeskJets, including the 1200C, 520 and 560C. Super LJ4 is for use with all HP LaserJets, even the new 4L and 4P. Each driver provides direct Preferences access to at leat 14 different typefaces and offers extended commands for text output and ink control. Creative Focus is also selling other drivers like one for Canon BJC-600. Creative Focus P.O. Box 580 Chenango Bridge, NY 13745 USA Phone: (607) 648 4082   - Scala, Inc. is currently developing the Studio 16 AD516 EX module for the Scala MM serie programs.   - The US company "Dimension Technologies" is offering "Composite Studio". Composite Studio is an image composition program that takes control of ToasterPaint/OpalPaint and allows you to quickly and easily arrange framstores or IFFs. Priced at only $100 US, the package is perfect for CG pages, multimedia and video. Use one of the 40 predefined templates or create custom beveled bars. Composite Studio allows you to batch process your finnish framstores and IFFs in unlimited number. Composite Studio includes QuickBrush, a CD with over 100 custom hi-res 24-bit brushes.   - NSDi has just released the all new version 4.0 od the AmiTCP. AmiTCP is an implementation of the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) for the Amiga. A demo version of the AmiTCP 4.0 may be found at AmiNet. NSDi - Network Solutions Development Inc. Oy P.O. Box 32 FIIN-02151 ESPOO Finland - MaxDOS version 2.1 from the US company Media4 Productions is now released. It allows you to read write Mac data using your Amiga. The new version offers transparent handling of MACBinary files, display the MAC's icons on the WorkBench and touts a completely rewritten manual. Media4 Productions 2800 University Ave. Suite H1B-101 West Des Moines, IA 50265 Phone: (515) 225 7409   - Dr Perry of the GP Software, Brisbane, Australia, announces the development of a new updated version of the GPFax software that will be available throug a free patch and will among other features, fixes the problem of printing of faxes to the prefs printer, especially those in fine mode and has support for among other boards, Picasso II graphic boars. GP Software's new software Wombat program is also under development to support the Picasso II graphic card. GP Fax suuport: Voice - +61 7 3661402 Fido: 3:640/304 - Greg Perry   - A new version 1.1 of the must have utility CPUBlit has been developmed. Check AmiNet for immediate release of this program and use it!   - CrosMAC by the Consultron, the maker of CrosDOS, is released now. The package features: - File System Features: - Read/Write Mac low and high density floppies, including AMAX and Emplant disks. - Read/Write Mac hard-drives including SyQuest and Bernoulli cartridges and AMAX and EMplant partitions. - Read MAC HFS CD-ROMs. - Data and Resource forks as separate files. - Mac icons displayed under WorkBench. - Full Mac file names. - MacBinary file support. - Optional Amiga<>Mac character translation. - File System support utilities: - Format, diskcopy and check the integrity of Mac disks. - File salvation program to try to recover files from a corrupt Mac disk. - Resource extractor to view or copy individual resources from a Mac resource fork. - Easy hard-drive configuration program. - Other valuable utilities. Consultron even offer "CrossFS pro Pack" that combines CrossMAC and CrossDOS 5 PLUS for one special low price. Consultron 8959 Ridge Rd. Plymouth, MI 48170-3213, USA Phone: (313) 459 7271   - We just got this very first hand information about a company that is currently developing a low cost adapter that will allows connection of any clone keyboard (mi*rosoft new ergonomic keyboard) included to any Amiga. This is a new product and we will carry more informaton about it in a later issue of AmyNews. Stay tune.   - Asimware Innovations announces the release of several new Amiga prodcust: - NEW ASIM CDFS version 3.0 software, Amiga CD filesystem, features: - Reads ISO-9660, High Sierra and MAC HFS CD-ROMs. - Includes ASIMTunes music CD player and ASIMPhoto PhotoCD Manager for the Amiga. - Fixes problems with GVP SCSI devices. - MasterISO sofware for mastering the CD-roms. Priced at $500, the Master ISO CD-ROM Writing Software features: - Control a CD-ROM recorder to create custom CD-ROM and CD-Audio disks - Formats in Universal ISO-9660 compatible with all systems - Supports Pinnacle single-speed & Yamaha 4x-spin CD-ROM Recorders - Each CD-ROM disk has a capacity of 540MB to 650MB at 2.6 cents a megabyte! - Create custom solution without taking up hard drive space - PhotoCD Manager CD32. prices at $35 US this software features: - Full graphic interface - Brings up HAM8, HAM or 24-Bit thumbnails of images. - Allows the user to view individual images in Low, Medium or high resolution. - Allows the creation of slide shows of selected images. - Text titles can be added to any image in slide show - Works with CD32, or any CD-ROM equipped Amiga. - Texture Heaven CD, over 500 images in 24-bit format - Texture Heaven CD 2, new version with over 164 Abstract and computer Generated Color Textures. Includes thumbnail preview images. Images come in IFF, HAM, FrameStore, JPEG, PCX, BMP and GIF formats   - Soft-Logic announces the immediate release of the patch file version 3.0e for the best Amiga DeskTop Publishing program ever, PageStream 3. The new patch will in addition to tons of other stuff, implements all text fill/color/stroke attributes, including the Reverse, Outline and Shadow type styles.   - The US company "Desktop Video Systems" is selling Drive-In which offers a complete hard-drive expansion system for your Video Flyer and other nonlinear editing systems. It includes a heavy duty case, 250-Watt power supply, internal SCSI cabling, external SCSI pass true connectors, SCSI ID switches, power/hard-drive activity LEDs and three cooling fans. The Drive-In supports several Flyer-compatible hard-drives, CD-ROM drives, and Tape drives. An optional adapter kit lets you access all three SCSI-2 controllers included with the Flyer. The Drive-In is available in several different configurations and as a pre-configured system with hard-drives installed and ready to go. Desktop Video Systems 14121 W.95th St. Lenexa, KS 66215 Phone: (913) 782 8888   - Eyetech Group Ltd announces that thet are selling "Fitting kit for 1200' s" that actually fit in the case properly complete with a 32 page pictorial booklet showing you how to do it, step by step and some useful PD software and Workbench version 3.0 pre-installed. Installation takes about 20 mins. Also available for A 4000's. Current prices are : 260MB £159 420MB £199 540MB £229 inclusive of VAT & UK shipping.   Alan M Redhouse Eyetech Group Ltd Stokesley, N Yorks UK EMail: eyetech@cix.compulink.co.uk   - "Sterling Connection" has just released "QwikForms CD-ROM", another MUST HAVE CD-ROM for business applications. The CD Includes: - 125 ready-made page layouts for PageStream, including legal documents, business letters, page layouts, animation cue sheets, flyers, video production planners, music sheets and many more. - 5300 state of the art clip art images. - 550 Type 1 fonts with AFM files included - 190 Gifs - 160 GDOS - 140 DMF fonts - 230 CFN Calamus fonts - 722 EPS postscript clip art - 700 business letters in TXT, ASCII format - 110 spreadsheet templates suited for TurboCalc and ProCalc Priced at only $40 US, the package includes printed graphic representations of all materials on the CD.   - "Legendary Design Technologies Inc." is offering "Sound Effect Library Vol. 1". The CD includes 300 effects in digital and standard CD-Audio format. 8- and 16-bit Mono/Stereo versions. Manufactored by Sound Ideas, the world's largest producer of commercially available sound effects.   - The Amiga raytracing software, Imagine from Impulse Inc. is now released in an interim version 3.1 that is supposed to remove all known bugs from version 3.0 and add a few new features in the following areas: - About box; addition. - States; in version 3.0 of Imagine, you were not able to morph certain aspects of each state, now you can morph almost everything. - DXF; DXF handler is much improved it the new version. - Backdrop Images; is useful for makeing logos and the like in the Spline editor and for creation of animations that have a moving backdrop image. - FLC and ANIM brushes; you can now map to any object a FLC or ANIM. - SHOW PIC and ANIM; with the simple click of a mouse button you can have Imagine show you any image in the formats that it reads, Anim files and FLC files. - Field Rendering; useful for single frame recorder, of digital animation system like the Personal Animation Recorder from DPS. - Stage Attributes; much improved. - Light Source and Object Viewports; view what other objects or lights would be seeing if they were the camera. - SMART BONES; much improved. Impulse Inc. Phone: 612-425-0557   - Synergy International has released it's long-awaited HollyWood FX for LightWave and the standalone LightRave. Priced at $250 US, HollyWood FX features: - Dozens of effects including multiple full motion video windows, 3D morphing transitions, particle effects and more. - Ability to batch render both HollyWood FX transitions and your own LightWave scenes. - Post processing with the Elastic Reality (former ASDG) Art Department Professional provides users with unique rotoscoped effects (e.g. processing video through the oil paint or fresco operators). Also allows conversion for playback of effects or animations at HAM and 256 colors screen resolutions.   - Fred Fish announces the development of an all new version of the mkisofs, the CD-ROM mastering software that uses RockRidge extensions. The new version will be released sometime in early February 95. The new version will among fixing all bugs in the software, include a graphical user interface, the capability of the CD-ROM creator to specify the precise name mapping between ISO level 1 names in the regular ISO data structures, and the names used in the RockRidge section.   - The 16Bit Microdeal Soundcard, titled AURA, is now on sale. AURA, Advanced Sound Sampling for your A600/A1200, is a brilliant new concept in high-performance, yet affordable sound sampling. The revolutionary hardware plugs into the PCMCIA slot to achieve extra- ordinary sampling performance in glorious 12-bit stereo, with optional direct-to-disk recording. Aura features: - The Software: - Record/Play/Edit 16- or 8- bit, mono or stereo sounds to memory or direct-to-hard disk. - Real-Time monitor of audio input with moving spectrum analyser and oscilloscope displays. - Amazing range of editing facilities including cut, paste, insert, delete, fade and volume. Editing controls work on both samples in memory and on hard disk. - Record samples into memory at rates in excess of 60KHz (A1200, 12- bit stereo) and direct-to-hard disk recording at rates in excess of 40KHz (A1200 12-bit stereo with Fast RAM). - 15 fully programmable, single source (one tap) sound effects can be used in real-time and on samples held in memory or even on hard disk, plus effect preview. - Block-orientated Sample Sequencer built-in. - Advanced digital filtering with 3-dimensional Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) interactive display. - Real-Time playback of samples under MIDI control (requires extra MIDI interface and keyboard). - Load and save IFF, RAW and AIFF sample formats. - Over 60 fully programmable, MULTI-SOURCE, sound effects on samples in memory, in real-time and to memory or hard disk (with effect preview); a unique feature.   - The Hardware: Aura is supplied with 12-bit stereo sound sampling inputs and outputs to obtain the ultimate digital quality of your recorded soundtrack, all in an attractive case. - Achieves a signal-to-noise ratio of 72-db - equivalent to most computer based 16-bit systems at a fraction of the cost. - PCMCIA credit card connection for maximum performance and expandability. - 12-bit quality sampling with 8/12/16-bit and mono/stereo versatilty built into the software. - Enhanced 12-bit quality phono outputs with Amiga audio mixed through as well. - Very high sample record/playback speeds (over 60KHz in 12-bit stereo mode on A1200). Package includes: Aura hardware, complete software, comprehensive 130- page manual, stereo phono-to-phono lead and registration card. Octamed version 5.02 and above include a dedicated 16-bit sample editor which is 100% Aura compatible and can play 16-bit samples through the Aura hardware while sequencing MIDI and normal Amiga 8-bit sounds. Priced at only £100 UK; this powerful combination provides stunning performance and sound quality for maximum impact. HiSoft/Microdeal The Old School Greenfield Bedford, MK45 5DE UK Phone: +44 (0) 1525 718181 Fax: +44 (0) 1525 713716   - The US company Syndesis is offering several CD-ROMs for Amiga 3D artists - 3D-ROM Vol. 1, 580 Objects and 400 Texture Maps. - 3D-ROM Vol. 2, 200 3D Objects in LightWave, WaveFront and other major formats. - Avalon Internet Object Collection, a compilation of a section of the Internet called Avalon designed for animators. Contains many 3D Objects and other helpful animator programs. Hundreds of 3D Objects in various formats, texture maps, conversion utilities, 3D Source code, FAQs, file format specifications and much much more. A must have!   - US company SaxMan System announces the rework and release of a new set of business and accounting packages for the Amiga. Among tons of other features in it's business applications, SaxMan mentions; cash processing and credit sales, general ledger, invoices and statements printing, payroll, inventory control, accounts receivable, accounts payable, payroll and job cost analysis. Professional quality is promissed for all packages. All packages are based on the Oxxis SBase Professional (former SuperBase Professional 4 from Precision SoftWare). Michael Winokur of SaxMan can even customize user defined, professional SBase pro appications for you. Phone: (415) 369-4411   - Mike Smithwick of Virtual Reality Labs. announces that the Amiga astronomy software Distant Sun is released in a new version 5.01. The new version has among other features support for Mac data files from the DS/Mac CD-ROM. Owners who want to upgrade to version 5.01 can then get the DS/Mac version direct from VRLI for a discount. EMail: mike@rahul.net   - Paul Kolenbrander announces the release of HTML-Heaven version 1.0, suited for creating and maintaining HTML documents. The package includes: - HTML-Genie Opens a window containing 6 listviews with HTML commands grouped by category. - HTML-Heaven Open a window containing a number of buttons for access to the most commonly used HTML commands. - ToolKit Opens a window with 2 listviews. One contains the same HTML commands that HTML-genie does. The other contains HTML commands or strings definable by the user. A demo version of the package is downloadable from Aminet. An EGS version is under development.   - Software Technology announces the continuing development of the companie,s bussiness package for the Amiga, "BEST Business Management". It is a full double entry system capable of controling inventory, invoices, P.O.'s and more. Phone: (503) 293-1385   - "Alpha Paint" from InnoVision, the maker of Montage 24, is a new powerful 24-bit paint package and a replacement for the "Toaster Paint". Priced at $585 US, "Alpha Paint" features: - Full-Screen RealTime 24-bit painting. - 12-bit Alpha Channel for Anit-Aliasing, Blending and Compositing. - Full-screen WYSIWYG with multiple Undo/Redo - no more wating for render or HAM artifacts. - Complete utilizationof the Toaster's hardware Video Mixing Alpha Channel for soft-edge feathering and Transparency effects over any live video source. - Advanced set of brushes, effects and tools including Airbrushing, Oil Paint, Rub-Through etc. - Full Text support for Toaster, Chroma and Postscript fonts, including XYZ Rotation, Circular Wrap, Glow, and Neon effects. - Supports pressure-sensitive drawing tablets. - Compatible with Toaster 2.0, 3.0, 3.1, and 4000. InnoVision Technology 1933 Davis St. San Leandro, CA 94577 USA Phone: (415) 638 8432   - Computer Answers is selling 2 new Amiga clones as follow: - Amiga model A2200-1: - 68020 CPU - 2 MB 32-Bit Chip Ram & 2 MB of Fast RAM - 3.5 Floppy & 210 MB HD - Amiga model A2200-2: - 68030 CPU & 68882 FPU @ 40mhz - 2 MB 32-Bit Chip RAM & 4 MB of Fast RAM - 3.5 Floppy & 420 MB HD Both models features: - Kickstart 3.1 Built In - Detachable Keyboard, 94 Keys, w/Function, Numeric & Cursor - Hi-resolution, Opto-Mechanical, Two Button Mouse - Seven Slots: One local BUs Slot (150 Pin Amiga 1200 Compatible) - One Compatability Slot for 486+ Card - One CPU slot for future expansion - Four IBM PC/AT compatible Slots - Interfaces: Mouse, Joystick, Lightpen, Graphics Tablet (X2), Serial, Parallel and CD-ROM ports, Composite Video, SVHS Video and RGB video. - Graphics: AGA chipset - Dimensions: 40cm Deep, 42cm Wide & 12cm High. - Power: 155/230 Volt, 50/60hz, 200 watt (CSA Approved)   - Thomas Dorn, the auther of the paint package XiPaint version 3.0, distributed by MacroSystem Germany, is currently developing the next major version of XiPaint. XiPaint is basically a paint program as fast as TVPaint, has much more features, works with multiple projects, brush and pen queues, has multiple undo/redo, etc. EMail: tdorn@xipaint.co.at Mailbox/Fax: ++43-1-2714549 MacroSystem Germany Phone: 2302-80884   - When we first during the last months of the last year, informed you about the release of the must have program Pegger, the Amiga Image Compression Software, version 2.0, we forgot to include the press release for the new version. Ok here it is. Heifner Communications Inc. is proud to announce the availability of V2.0 of their product, PEGGER, an automated image compression system for Amiga computers. PEGGER version 2.0 brings powerful new features to improve the performance and useability of their already popular product. New features in version 2.0 include: - SNOOP By Program This incredible new SNOOP mode allows the user to specify the compression and decompression mode on a program-by-program basis. Now, many different programs can read compressed images from the same directory but using different file formats! - Incredible Speed Improvement Pegger is now roughly twice as fast as the original Pegger and certainly the fastest image compression/decompression system on the Amiga! - New File Formats Pegger now supports Impulse RGB8, IFF 8-bit color, IFF 8-bit greyscale (useful for texture maps alpha channel images), JPEG greyscale, TARGA Color, and TARGA Greyscale, and NewTek Toaster CG Framestore Pages. - Full Network Support Pegger now has fully tested network support. We have tested the network support with ParNet, ENLAN-DFS, and Novell. - More configuration options More configuration options for starting Pegger have been added as TOOLTYPES in the Pegger icon. - Of Course, Lots of Bug fixes! Original Features of Pegger Include: - ARexx support. - Support for NewTek Framestore, 24-bit IFF, DCTV, and HAM8 images. - PEGGER can process images up to 32000 pixels wide using less than 4 MB of system RAM. - AmigaDOS 2.0 & 3.0 compatible. - Follows all AmigaDOS programming guidelines. - Adjustable priority for JPEG compression and decompression. - PEGGER is designed to multi task in the background using minimal system resources so a 3D rendering or graphics program can also run at the same time. - Snoop feature allows PEGGER to compress the output of your 3D rendering or graphics program into a JPEG file automatically. - JPEG code has been optimized in 100% 68000 assembly for speed. Uppgrade fee for curent Pegger user is $15.00 US + shipping/handling. For more information please contact Chris Minshall / Ivan Moore at: Heifner Communications, INC. 4451 I-70 Drive NW Columbia, MO 65202 Phone: (800) 445-6164 Phone: (314) 445-6163 Fax: (314) 445-0757 EMail: Pegger@express-way.com   - Yes, the very long-awaited CyberPicasso, Picasso II graphic board replacement software, is now released. More about this wonderful software in a later issue of AmyNews. A demo version is avilable through AmiNet.   - We have just been informed that 3 wonderful CD titles has been reworked to take advantages of AGA chipset in the newer Amiga: - Insight: Technology From household appliance to high-tech science . A fashinating look inside the way things works with sound, images, videos and text. - Guiness Book of the World Record (new version), over 6000 recores - Crollers Encyclopedia 2 A must have, awared winning reference work using CD-ROM and MultiMedia For availability and price please contact your Amiga dealer.   - Dr Perry of the GP Software, Brisbane, Australia, maker of the Amiga FAX software GPFax, announces the release of the companies bussiness package "General Ledgers". Jonathan (DrirectoryOpus) Potter has partly been involved in development of this package. Voice - +61 7 3661402 Fido: 3:640/304 - Greg Perry   - Eureka's president Frank Hoen release information about current Eureka's products and the products under development: - Communicator II, the improved version of the very popler Communicator for CD32 is now available. The Communicator II makes CD32 an intelligent 2 way computer with CD-rom controlled by the amiga. Highlights for the new Communicator II are: - Software improvments: - Speed: Transfer speed can be reached of upto 210000 baud. - Virtual disk: Using non-volatile ram of the CD32, the user can select which menu program he wants to boot with. - User Interface: The Bootup Menu and Communicator program are integrated into 1 easy to use program. - Visual Feedback: Visual feedback is given when the CD32 receives commands. Examples of visual feedback are playing CD's, setting the baudrate, showing when files are being transferred etc. - File Transfer: The Communicator II now has 3 ways of transferring files; Safety, CD-rom and High-speed CLI. - CD32 AGA viewer: View pictures and animations from CD or amiga in 16.7 Million colours. The viewer functions as framebuffer for non-aga machines enabling you to view AGA pictures in 16.7 Million colours. - WorkBench: A newer version is installed for improved compatibility. - MediaPoint and Scala drivers: Included the Scala driver, the new Communicator II is now supplied with the new Mediapoint Full motion video (needs Full Motion Video cartridge); Mpeg, and Audio Xapp offering advanced audio and video control. - Hardware improvments: - The new Communicator II hardware case has an extra A2000/3000 key- board plug next to it's standard CD32/ A4000 keyboard plug. Also the serial cable to the amiga is now a DB25 serial to RJ10 jack (telephone) plug. The serial cable can be easily changed and has a cable guard. The Communicator to CD32 connector is strengthened even more and the Communicator's LED's are now on the front for even better visibility. This added to the steel plated case makes for a very robust design. The low cost Communicator Lite II has the same features as the full blown Communicator II except it doesn't have LED's, a MIDI, keyboard interface and the advanced power control of the Communicator. For Communicator users software upgrades can be obtained from their Communicator dealer or directly from Eureka at extra charge. - Further products from Eureka are the Afterburner 50mhz 68030 turbo for the A4000/A3000 and Photolite PhotoCD software for CD32. - The all new version of the Helm, Amigas authoring program, is soon available through to all Euro Amiga users. For more information concerning Eureka products, please contact: Eureka, Frank Hoen Adsteeg 10 6191 PX Beek (L) The Netherlands Voice: +31(0)46370800 Fax: +31(0)46360188 Email: hoen@iaehv.iaehv.nl   - Amiga E Compiler package, the natural source for the Amiga E programmers is now available in an all new version 3.1a. The Amiga E Compiler was developed over the course of more than three and a half years, after the author's idea of a good programming language, and a quality amiga- specific compiler for it. It was programmed (as you might have guessed) in 100% assembly. All other support programs were written in E itself. E is an object oriented / procedural / unpure functional higher programming language, mainly influenced by languages such as C++, Ada, Lisp etc. It is a general-purpose programming language, and the Amiga implementation is specifically targeted at programming system applications. The number of features of the language is really too great to sum up entirely and include: speed of >20000 lines/minute on a 7 Mhz amiga, inline assembler and linker integrated into compiler, large set of integrated functions, great module concept with v39 includes as modules, flexible type-system, quoted expressions, immediate and typed lists, low-level and object polymorphism, exception handling, inheritance, data-hiding, methods, multiple return values, default arguments, register allocation, fast memory management, unification, LISP-Cells, (macro-) preprocessor, source-level debugger, and much more... The new version 3.1a among a lot of bug fixes features: - SourceLevel debugging! option DEBUG/S and external debugger EDBG - Built-in preprocessor! (conditional compilation & macro preprocessing), Mac2E and Cpp compatible - The SUPER keyword allows calling of superclass methods - Some new example sources, new tool modules (FilledVector, EasyGUI and more) - new versions of Aprof and EE - docs updated: new features, FAQ etc... Amiga E is shareware and can be registred directly by it's auther. A demo version is available in Aminet. For registration and further information, please contact: Wouter van Oortmerssen Levendaal 87 2311 JG Leiden HOLLAND EMail: wouter@mars.let.uva.nl EMail: wouter@alf.let.uva.nl   - CyberCall is selling CyberEdit Pro version 2.26 which is suited for using the Video Toaster with Future Video edit controllers. Priced at $999 US, CyberEdit Pro bring professional, cuts-only editing to the masses. Used in conjunction with a Future Video edit controller like Future Video's Edit Link 3300, your Amiga, a Video Toaster and a couple of industrial VCRs become a capable edit system. CyberCall 20 Cleveland Awe. Highland Park, NJ 08904 USA Phone: (908) 249 9883   - German based company MAXON Computer Gmbh is currently developing a new version of MAXONWord, the companies very populer word processor. The current version features: - Supports endnotes/footnotes on screen in real-time WYSIWYG mode. - Style settings: character and paragraph attributes can be applied by dragging their icon out of a list and dropping it on the paragraph/ marked block. - Standard Amiga bitmap and ColourFonts - Compugraphic fonts supported (and all other fonts using Amiga's font scaling subsystem (diskfont.library >= V37), i.e. CG fonts with bullet.library, others with their own "bullet.libraries". - Adobe Type 1 font-rasterizer (similar to Adobe Type Manager on Mac and Windows). Directly supports PC and NeXT Type 1 fonts, Mac fonts after conversion. The included fonts are in PostScript Type 1 format. - Support for printer build in fonts. - Output to maximum resolution of any printer with a Workbench driver. Colour printers supported too. - Index/Table of contents generation. - IFF ILBM, GIF, DR2D graphics import. - Each page can have an unlimited amount of text boxes, which can be placed in columns, rows or whatever (ala DTP). Column style boxes can be generated with a layout-generator. - Configurable menus and hotkeys. - Spell-checking in five languages.   - Data Managment and Research is selling MultiFinder, an all new database package for the Amiga. More news about this new software in a later issue of AmyNews.   - A new version of the Amiga Mosaic version 1.3 is currently under development. A beta version of this software is obtainable from max.physics.sunysb.edu/pub/amosaic.   - The Canadian Computer Answers is selling the new Amiga 2200 in a low end and a high end version. - Model A2200-1 Specifications, the low end one - CPU: 68020 CPU - RAM: 2 MB 32-Bit Chip Ram and 2 MB of Fast RAM - Storage: 3.5 Floppy and 210 MB HD - Price: $1199 US - Model A2200-2 Specifications, the high end one - CPU: 68030 CPU & 68882 FPU @ 40mhz - RAM: 2 MB 32-Bit Chip RAM and 4 MB of Fast RAM - Storage: 3.5 Floppy & 420 MB HD - Price: $1599 US Common Features for both models: Kickstart 3.1 Built In Detachable Keyboard, 94 Keys, w/Function, Numeric & Cursor Hi-resolution, Opto-Mechanical, Two Button Mouse Seven Slots: One local BUS Slot (150 Pin Amiga 1200 Compatible) One Compatability Slot for 486 and better Card One CPU slot for future expansion Four IBM PC/AT compatible Slots Interfaces: Mouse, Joystick, Lightpen, Graphics Tablet (X2), Serial, Parallel and CD-ROM ports, Composite Video, SVHS Video and RGB video. Graphics: AGA chipset Dimensions: 40cm Deep, 42cm Wide & 12cm High. Power: 155/230 Volt, 50/60hz, 200 watt (CSA Approved)   Please understand that these are not Amiga Clone as the MacroSystem's DraCo but redesign of the Amiga computers to suit the markets demand. Phone: (306) 764 2888 Fax: (306) 764 0088   - MUI, MagicUserInterface, the powerful object oriented GUI builder for the Amiga is now released in a version 2.3. Being writen by Stefan Stuntz, the MUI v2.3 is a SASG product. From a programmers point of view, using MUI saves a lot of time and makes life much easier. Thinking about complicated terms like window resizing or font sensitivity is simply not neccesary. On the other hand, users of MUI based applications have the ability to customize nearly every pixel of a programs interface according to their personal taste. A demo version of this wonderful product is waiting for you in your favorite Amiga FTP site :-)   - New Zealand company ACID software is developing version 3.0 of it's powerful Basic package BlitzBasic. The new package will contains Acid Blitz Compiler version 2.0 which features: - An all new manual, and 100's of new commands that have been added to the language over the last 12 months. - Full support for Intuition programming - Workbench 2 and 3 support - Complete AGA control - Inline assembler - New BlitzOS, GadTools and ASL command libraries - Beta of Blitz3D to be included - New upgraded debugger BlitzBasic ability to mix assembly language with compiled BASIC in the one environment has given Blitz the cutting edge for Amiga developers. There are currently a set of sofwares developed using BlitzBasic. The list includes SkidMarks version 2.0 Super SkidMarks, CenterCourt Tennis, Guardian2 and more. Super SkidMarks features: - New 8 car mode for AGA machines - Shared screen mode for up to 4 player team racing - Triple split screen mode for three players on one Amiga - Caravan towing - 12 new tracks as well as the original 12 - New cars including Mini, VW, F1, Cow and Midget - New Acid Intelligence technology for computer drivers - Super view mode for locally linked AGA machines - Improved comms support for local and remote linking + internet support - Competition play with a multitude of challenging series - Imagine->SkidMarks car converter for user defined cars ACID software is currently developing: Blitz3D, Gloom, Blitz-Jaguar. Fax: +649 358 1658. Email: acid@iconz.co.nz   - US based company Oxxi announces the release of it's powerful Database Managment System, SBase Professional version 1.30n (former SuperBase Professional 4 from Precision SoftWare). SBase currently offers enhanced ARexx control, printer support and DML commands. It includes logical fields, query across relationships and multiple files, store & recall report and query formats, definition for up to 60 function key commands. Oxxi offer a range of other Amiga products related to DBMS and networking: - Sbase 4 LAN adds the ability for Sbase Pro to work over a network of computers using either Sbase for the Amiga or SPC's Superbase Windows. - Developer's Extension adds; a runtime module to SBPro 4 which allows stand-alone applications to be written. The runtime-module is an unlimited license and costs $399.95. - Oxxi client software; allows Amigas to hook into a Novell Netware network with Macs and PCs. The server must be running Netware 2.15 or higher. The Amiga retains all multi-tasking capabilities and Oxxi includes a number of Amiga-specific network utilities. Price depends on the number of Amigas. Any Oxxi software that requires a dongle to operate can be upgraded to a non-dongle version for $10.00. Upgrade fee for current SBase 1.X owner is $10. More about this release in a later issue of AmyNews. Oxxi Inc. Box 90309, Long Beach, CA 90809, USA voice 310-427-1227 fax 310-427-0971   - US based company Silent Paw Production is shipping the first Portable Amiga WorkStations (PAWS). We are afraid that we currently can not give you any more information about PAWS. Silent Paw Production P.O.Box 1825 Manassas, VA 22110 USA Phone/Fax: (703) 330 7290   - PhoneBill, the Amigas log file analyzer is now available in a new version 3.2. PhoneBill scan log files generated by a terminal program or a mailer, extract all information about calls you have made by using your modem, and store this in its own (short) format. After extracting the calls PhoneBill can generate various reports in which you can find information on duration and costs of the calls. Version 3.2 features: - Added scanners for AmiTel, Off-line Amiga, DreamTerm, ISDN-Master- Telephone-Log. - Added a new cookie for fido-style addresses to the scanner. If you have `traplist' installed the address found will be used to find the real name and phonenumber of the host. You'll need to configure the "Nodelist path" (see miscellaneous settings). - Phonebill has become a commodity. - Added: if you want to rescan the log files you won't have to go through the trouble of removing the signatures with a text editor, just use the new `Rescan logs' menu item. - New option for disabling writing signatures to the log file - New report presets for the scan range and groups. - New hosts can be automatically added by supplying the rate(s) with a pattern to match certain area codes. Priced at only $10 US, the package is downloadable from following Hosts: Grafix Attack (Sysop: Kees Huizer) +31-(0)10-4745816 (V32Bis) +31-(0)10-4741062 (19k2 ZyXEL) +31-(0)10-4744682 (28K8) FidoNet: 2:286/407.0 AmigaNet: 39:153/201.0 NLA: 14:101/200.0   Decades BBS (Sysop: Thomas Andersson) +46-54-831561 (USR 28.8 V.Everything) FidoNet: 2:203/625.0 AmigaNet: 39:160/105.0   - Gordon Harwood Computers are distributing the Imagine 3.0 Enhancer CD, produced by the German company OberLand. This disk contains several hundred models, textures and fonts, including a selection of rather nice images of clouds, sunny beaches and the like for use as backdrops. The famous German Imagine user Horst Kolodziejczyk has contributed a selection of objects and some excellent renders of them. The disk costs £49.94 UK and is available in the UK from Gordon Harwood. Phone: 01773 836781   - German based company Corporate Media announces the release of PhotoWorx Professional. The new version supports Kodaks new professional resolution; 4000*6000 and have built in virtual memory support. Corporate Media is also selling FolioWorx. FolioWorx supports Kodaks all new portfolio format. Kodaks Portfolio format is suited for multi- media applications and has support for 24-bit images and 16-bit sound. Corporate Media Phone: 511-661041 511-661042 511-661043 Fax: 511-668279   - the US company DarkSoft computers announces the release of a new version 1.2 of the companie's low cost multiple platform graphic conversion and processing software, Transition. Priced at only $40 US this powerful software features: - Converts images to and from 24 bit, IFF, GIF, JPEG, PCX and more. - Resizing, precise scaling, color correction, batch processing etc - Super easy, point and click environment - Configurable image output options   - Questar Productions announces the availability of the prerelease version of the World Construction Set version 1.0, priced at $195 US. List price for the release version is $250 US. Questar Productions is currently updating the manual for the release version of the Questar. The World Construction Set is a so called terrain renderer or scenery generator/animator with promissing features. Highlights of WCS include the abililty to render the entire earth, true spline motion paths with a graphic editor, a complete key frame animation system with over 150 parameters that you can animate, the ability to load and save LightWave motion paths, photographic rendering quality, the ability to load standard USGS DEM files, a style guide compliant windowing interface, support for high res graphics cards, and the proverbial "much more". :) World Construction Set (WCS) is the next generation of computer terrain modeling software. WCS' powerful renderer sets new standards in photo-realism, producing images that are often mistaken for actual photographs. WCS' ecosystem modeling approach combines familiar 3D imaging techniques with Nature's own processes to deliver scenes of sublime beauty and lifelike detail to your Amiga. World Construction Set is like nothing you have seen befor! Questar productions 1058 Weld Co. Rd. 23 Brighton, CO 80601 USA Phone: (303) 659-4028 Look what Amiga World reviewer write about World Construction Set: ______________________________________________________________ |~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| ____| Belonging to a specialized group of programs commonly known |____ \ | as landscape makers / terrain renderers, World Construction | / \ | Set (WCS) is arguably the most powerful and complex package | / ) | on the Amiga or any other personal computer platform | ( / |______________________________________________________________| \ /_______)~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~(_______\   Another Amiga program that outperform anything on any other platform. Go Amiga Go ....   - Jason Compton, the Editor-In-Chief of the online Amiga Magazin, "Amiga Report Magazine" is helping to organize a fact-finding and project- development campaign for ISDN technology and the Amiga. Giorgio Gomelsky, is leading the campaign. His primary goals are to gather as much information about ISDN and ISDN technology application (he already has experience in the area), and then to develop feasible and useful products to incorporate the Amiga into this growing market. If you can help, please mail him at gio@phantom.com.   - Will Bow and Colin Thompson of the "BOTH Software" announce the developmet of the Amiga COMAL programming language. COMAL isa also known as the Readable C. COMAL version 2.0 for the Amiga is currently under betatesting. This version has all the looping structures, I/O, Turtle Graphics, and sprite control. The public version is an Interpreted Language. A commercial version that can be compiled is currently developed.   - Brian Aagaard Petersen annouces the release of the very long-awaited EqEd, the Amiga mathematical equations and expressions Editor. EqEd, using MagicUSerInterface lets you design your expressions in a easy to understand WYSIWYG manner, and export it for insertion in your favourite wordprocessor like FinalWriter, WordWorth or a DTP-program like PageSetter. EqEd in it's current version features: - WYSIWYG editing. No need remember how a fraction or integral is done. - Supports "Multiple lines" and "Multiple lines" - Unlimited nesting of fractions, roots etc - Output in "LaTex", "PostScript" and "IFF" formats - Unlimited size of equations - Userdefineable shortcut keys - A nice and clean GUI using the MUI - Intensive Online help - Clipboard support   - Utilities Unlimited International, inventer of the Amiga Emplant technology has released the new version 5.0 of the software for the Macintosh emulation module. here is the feature list: - New multi-os.device - New empser.device - New amia.device - New Jam.library - New EMPLANT.library - More OS2.x compliant user interface - New RsrvMemV - Fixed a problem with HardFileSetup - Fixed icon image data for floppy devices using multi-os.device with the emulation - Reduced maximum device transfer size to 64K - Massive re-write of AmigaDOS device support - Created 'empdisc.device' - Added support for AmigaDOS removable media devices such as Syquests, Bernoullis, and CD-ROM drives (using empdisc.device and empcd.device) - Corrected a major problem with System 7.5 support - Overall cleanup of the emulation's interface code - New video drivers for PiccoloSD64 video board The uppgrade software is available through UU BBS or AmiNet.   - Ben Williams, President of the Black Belt Systems announces a Feb 95 release of the companies Amiga image manipulation software Imagemaster R/t. Feature list and upgrade info in a later issue of AmyNews.   - Digita International, announces a Feb 95 release of Wordworth that will support the Picasso graphic board from Villiagetronic.   - EGS, Enhanced Graphics System, all new version 7.0 is now available for all Amiga non-EGS graphic boards. EGS currently supports these Amiga graphic cards: Merlin, EGS-110, Retina, Domino, Rainbow, Picasso, Visiona, IV-24. EGS German distributor, DTM, Fax #: 06127-66276.   - German based company MAXON Computer Gmbh announces the release of the companies relational database Twist version 2.0.   - The dutch company MacroSystem GmbH announces DraCo, the first Amiga clone. DraCo is a powerful Graphics and Video Workstation based on the Motorola 68060, Retina BLT over a direct bus with data rates of over 20MB/second and the Amiga Operating System. All system freindly Amiga program that don't requires the custom Amiga chip are compatible with this new workstation. More about this new baby in a later issue of AmyNews.   - Jack Radigan of DynaLogic announces the immediate release of DynaLogics telecommunication software, Terminus, version 2.0e. DynaLogic BBS has got a new number which is: 914-934-5922.   - We are proud to announce the availability of another all new powerful personal finance management tool for tracking assets and liabilities, CheckItOut. CheckItOut! is an extremely fast finance manager that currently features: - Multiple account types: Checking, Savings, Credit Card, Cash, Asset, Liability. - Many accounts can be managed simultaneously. - Flexible categorization of spending and income, including multi-level categories. - Extremely fast data entry using SmartType(TM) - Fast fund transfers from one account to another. - Very convenient account reconciliation with bank statements using intuitive windows. - Numerous reports are available analyzing personal finances. - On-Line HyperText Help with Context Sensitive Help - Imports/Exports transactions and categories in .qif format, a defacto industry standard compatible with Quicken and Microsoft Money programs. A full demo version of the program is available on AMINET. For price and ordering information please contact: Bug Free Development P.O. Box 7042 Nashua, NH 03060 USA EMail: 71171.3015@CompuServe.com   - Final Writer version 3.0, the powerful Amiga word processer is now released. Woody Williams, SoftWood's President says the new version makes FW easier to use. Upgrade cost for owners of Final Writer 2 will be the modest $5. Version 3.0 features: - Drag and drop text editing - Type and spell--option to spell check as you type - Dictionary hyphenation option - Easy page numbering without the need to know about master pages - Easy header/footer setup without the need to know master pages - Enhanced text selection including triple-click, quad-click, shift extended selection, and enhanced text selection while dragging mouse - "no warning" auto-save option - Polygon and beizier special shape drawing tools - Selective display of master page items on first only, all but first, and all pages of section - Enhanced page number formatting - More precise "snap to" grid for graphics and text blocks - Ability to use more than one language for spelling and typing (requires purchase of extra dictionarys)   - The german-based "Vector HARD & SOFT" reports that a new ROM for the "Vector Conn", multi-serial/parallel port is under beta testing. "Vector Conn" is a Zorro-II board for the Amiga that comes with 2 parallels and 4 serial ports. Contact "Vector HARD & SOFT" for more information: Phone: 00949-0221-369062 Fax: 00949-0221-369065   - Voyager, the Dynamic Sky Simulator, version 2.0 is under development. Voyager version 1.0 and 1.1 as it was released during 90-92 became the choosen Amiga software of the year and set the standard for astronomical software. Voyager brings a dynamic universe to your Amiga, re-creating the sky for almost time and any location. It's an incredible learning tool for astronomers. Fast enough to show eclipses; Voyager is indees the fastest astronomy program on any platform. Contact Carina sodtware for more information: Carina Software 830 Williams Street San Leandro, California 94577 Phone: (510) 352-7332 - Michael Meshew announces the release of a new "Light-ROM" CD for 3D artists. This is a 647 Mb CD dedicated to 3D artists all over the world, and contains Lightwave objects (and other format) each with thumbnail pictures, scene files, textures, bump maps (JPEG, IFF, & TARGA), fonts, thumbnail renderings, and text files with advice from the rendering pros. It also contains a "Showcase Directory", displaying the talents of selected Lightwave artists from all over the world. LIGHT-ROM will be updated at approximately 6 month intervals. Priced at $35 US, the CD can be obtained from: Fred Fish Phone: (602) 917-0917 Fax: (602) 917-0917 Email: fnf@amigalib.com   - Fred Fish announces the release of the second pressing of the Meeting Pearls CD. This CD contains about 150 high quality and high resolution fractals, a ready to run version of PasTeX which includes fonts for FAX and 600 DPI printers, a ready to install version of the Amiga NetBSD port, and many other ready to run applications including UMS, DaggeX, a lot of utilities, games, etc. Fred Fish Tel: +1-602-917-0917 Fax: +1-602-917-0917 Email: fnf@amigalib.com   - Daniel S. Milling Jr. announces the release of RenderCalc version 1.46, the ultimate multimedia tool for 3D artist that want to know the number of frames it would take for an object moving X miles per hour to move Y feet. RenderCalc features: - Ability to enter values for Speed and Distance and receive output telling the user how many total frames, seconds, minutes and the length of time, in the specified time code format, that the motion will take. - The Speed, Distance and Length Input Gadgets have Cycle gadgets attached to them which allows you to change the units of the entered number 'on the fly.' This gives you instantaneous updates without having to re-type the number. - Table of conversions between units of length. Supported units are inches, feet, yards, miles, millimeters, meters and kilometers. - Ability to change the units of ANY inputted number and have all of the values update, relative to the new units, on the fly. This saves having to re-type the values. - If you want to convert a number to different units, you may enter that number into the Length gadget and see the printed results in the conversion table below. - The table of conversions is linked to the Distance and Length gadgets, which means that any number entered in either gadget will be converted and printed into the table. The reason for this is that if you enter a number into the Distance gadget and would like to know what it converts to in units of a different system, you don't have to re-type it into the Length gadget. It is automatically calculated and printed for you. - SMPTE non-drop frame, EBU and Film time code supported. SMPTE drop frame is NOT implemented at this time. - Ability to enter Time Code In and Out points as well as a Duration. The time code values are printed out under the Time Code Output section. The time code input has two modes of operation. You may enter Time Code In and Time Code Out points which results in Duration being the final output value. You may also enter a Time Code In and a Duration which will give you the Time Code Out as your final value. - Ability to add/subtract either timecode values or a number of frames from any of the Timecode Input values. This saves a lot of time and comes in quite handy when you need to alter an already inputed value. - Ability to enter a decimal frame value and have it converted to the appropriate time code, relative to the current Time Code Type. - Ability to change the Time Code Type 'on the fly.' This means that you may switch between the supported time code formats and see the updated results immediately without having to re-enter the values. - And more. A full demo version of the program is available on AMINET.   - Ok, the wait is over. AmyNews is very proud to announce that the very long- awaited Tower JFIF DataTypes Class & Tower JPEG Codec Class v1.0 from Christoph Feck, TowerSystems, is now finally released. Christoph Feck TowerSystems Balbierstrasse 6 D-67663 Kaiserslautern Germany Email: feck@informatik.uni-kl.de   - The long-awaited MathScript version 1.0 is now released. MathScript is a formula editor, which is used to integrate mathematical formulas into word processors. MathScript version 1.0 features: - With MathScript, it is very easy to create complex formulas. To insert them into word processors or DTP programs they are saved as graphic files. To garantee the highest possible quality they are saved as vector graphics in the EPS format. They can be loaded into all word- processor and DTP programs which support this format (FinalWriter, PageStream etc). They can be printed out by PostScript printers and through software PostScript interpreters on all printers. - Extensive amount of mathematical and physical symbols - Control codes for formatting (super-, subscript, fractions, roots) - Easy input via Workbench GUI - Export in the EPS format - ARexx port - support for the locale.library (beginning with OS 2.1). Available languages are english, german, french. MathScript is a shareware product priced at $15 US and is obtainable from: Simon Ihmig Beim Rauhen Hause 30 22111 Hamburg Germany EMail: Ihmig@tu-harburg.d400.de   - ImageStudio version 1.2.1 is now released. ImageStudio is the low cost solution for image processing on the Amiga. The new version features: - Improved speed of preview redraw. - Added greyscale JPEG read / write. - Improved speed and quality of HAM6 and HAM8 file creation. - Improved speed and quality of 24bit internal viewer. - Now uses ASL screenmode requester with Workbench2.1+. - Added dynamic range expansion effect. - Now sets program stack size within the program - no need to set the stack from the CLI. - Fixed bug which caused the FlipX effect to work incorrectly with 24bit images. - Fixed bug which caused non-AGA Amigas to think that they could view 64, 128 and 256 colour pictures directly. - Few minor bug fixes and improvements.   - Douglas M. Dyer announces the realease of amiCheck, checkbook/account manager, version 1.31. amiCheck is doubtless, one of the best checkbook program for the Amiga or anyother platform. It has a very solid but simple to use GUI and is superbly suited for the professional Amiga users. amiCheck has extensive automation capabilities and can be driven almost entirely by keyboard if desired. The interface is font-sensitive and on the workbench so graphics board compatibility is high. Release note for new version 1.31: - Interface - Floating palette window of templates. - Various GUI improvements - Preference menu - Two register styles (toggle showing memo) - Configure double-click action on transactions - Summarize multiple accounts - View total current or statement balances, tax deductions - Make project files with account lists - Filtering - Use AmigaDOS pattern matching on payee and memo fields A full demo version of the program is available on AMINET.   - Bruce Dawson from Cygnus Software (he wrote the wonderful CygnusEditor, CEd) announces the release of a new version 2.01 of the best fractal exploration program for the Amiga, Mand2000. Mand2000 draws pictures of the Mandelbrot set and other fractals on your Amiga and allows you to explore them by doing animated zooms towards interesting areas. Mand2000 combines speed, power and simplicity with a few unique features, all designed to make it easy for you to discover uncharted regions of the Mandelbrot set, Julia set and other fractals. Feature list: - Point and click animated zooming, the most intuitive way of exploring the Mandelbrot and Julia sets. Just point and double click. - Mand2000 allows you to pan across fractal images using your keyboard, mouse, or joystick. Plug in your joystick to scroll and zoom your way around the most complex object ever seen. - Mand2000's multi-pass drawing lets you see an approximation of the final picture in a fraction of the total calc time. Even for pictures that will take several minutes to complete, you can get a good idea of what your picture will look like almost immediately. This allows you to quickly decide whether to keep zooming, or wait for the completed picture. - Mand2000 has a multi-window, multi-requester design. You can adjust parameters and see the changes in real time as Mand2000 continues calculating while you use the requesters. Leave as many requesters and fractal windows open as you want. - Mand2000 lets you calculate fractal zoom movies quickly, by calculating key frames and letting Mand2000's TweenPlayer create the intermediate frames at playback. - Mand2000 has full AGA support, compatibility with the all third party graphics boards in up to 256 colour mode, literally dozens of different assembly language math routines for accuracies ranging from 16 bit to 1000+ bit, on-line help, printing, multi-level undo, built in locations to start you searching, full featured ARexx support, several ARexx scripts supplied, graphical displaying of your location, etc. - Mand2000 supports rendering fractals in HAM, HAM8, and dithered 256 colour. This allows you to display your fractals in thousands of different colours - on ANY Amiga. The entire user interface will now, optionally, run in these modes, allowing a separate palette for each fractal window, each palette consisting of thousands of colours. - Mand2000 creates anim files directly. Iteration movies, Julia seed movies, morph movies, and whatever animation types you feel like adding. All of these are written out in the standard anim format, for immediate playback with any animation player. For more information please contact: Cygnus Software 33 University Square, #199 Madison, WI, 53713 USA Phone: (608) 277-0413, 12:00 to 8:00 PM, Central Time EMail: CygnusSoft@cup.portal.com   - Soft-Logik Publishing, maker of the DTP program PageStream has moved to a new building.   OLD STREET ADDRESS NEW STREET ADDRESS   11131F South Towne Sq. 315 Consort Drive St. Louis, MO 63123 St. Louis, MO 63011   OLD POST OFFICE BOX NEW POST OFFICE BOX   P.O. Box 510589 not yet available St. Louis, MO 63151 St. Louis, MO 63011   OLD PHONE NUMBERS NEW PHONE NUMBERS   SALES 1-800-829-8608 1-800-829-8608 314-894-8608 314-256-9595   TECHNICAL SUPPORT 1-800-829-5816* 1-800-829-5816* 314-894-0431 314-256-9333   FAX 314-894-3280 314-256-7773   BBS (2 lines now!) 314-894-0057 314-256-8971**   * for paid technical support only ** ringdown 2 nodes BBS   - GVP announces the release of the PhonePak software version 2.5. Phone- pack is the ultimate Information System/Answering Machine/Fax Machine soulution for all ZorroII equiped Amigas. There are tons of improvments and addition to the software; just to mention some: - VFX Control Panel - Database - Fax Display Screen - Operator - New Operator Commands - Switchboard - Message Forwarding - Interface Changes (LineMan program) - Call Handling (LineMan program)   - Stefan Becker report that he is currently writing an update version of the ToolManager, the must have Amiga program that is widly known as one of the best Amiga utilities ever. For feature list of the new version, please consider reading one of the later issues of AmyNews. There is currently a hacked/patched version of the toolmanager.library floating arund in the German BBSs. Please remove it from your system.   - Erik Quackenbush of the Scala, Inc. announces the immediate release of the very long-awaited PCMCIA driver for all Amigas with PCMCIA port. The driver allows you to connect any 14400 and 28800 modem to the Amiga PCMCIA port. It also supports PCMCIA serial port cards, which can go up to 115.2kbps. The driver have been tested with among other, a serial card from Smart Modular Technologies and it works great. For a complete release info please read one of the later issue of AmyNews.   - The best Directory Utlity program (no matter what platform you are thingking about), DirectoryOpus in an ALL NEW version 5.0, is due to an immediate release during the first months of 1995. A demo version 5.0 was shown in the WoA Dec 95 in London. The program is now mainly REWRITEN! Here is the feature list so far: - The most striking new feature on DOpus 5 is that it looks much like your WorkBench! In this new upgrade, each disk volume would have it own icon which can be clicked to display its own column, and files can be left out of the drawers like in WorkBench. - Complete online help - Datatyppe support - Drag and drop for application icons - Full multithreaded internal processes (internal multitasking), e.g each file display is now launched as a separate processes. - And more. Estimated upgrade price is the moderate $30 US.   - Utilities Unlimited International, inventer of the Amiga Emplant technology is announcing the new version 5.0 of the software for the Macintosh emulation module. Jim Drew of UU, showed "e586DX", the IBM-PC module for the Emplant at the Dec 94 Word of Amiga Show in London. The software emulates a Pentium chip (without the bug :-). The CPUID instruction returns "Amiga Inside" as vendor information :-) The emulation requires a GFX board with a VGA controller, like the Picasso or Piccolo. The emulation works very stable. All x86 instructions are translated 1-to-1 on the fly, so the speed of the emulation depends on the type of operation. On the test machine at the show, memory moves were 2.5 times faster than on a 486DX2-66, but computational intensive instructions are slower. The PC emulator will be available in mid January 95. It will require a replacement of a logic chip on the Emplant board and the emulation software.   - Helmut Hoffmann announces the release of EGSPhotoAlbum version 1.7, the comfortable picture management and presentation software for EGS equipped Amigas. Here is a list of improvements in version 1.7: - User interface There is now a page menu in the preview page window, which allows to flip the pages without use of the control window. The menu entries also have keyboard shortcuts. - Remove function The delete function of V1.5 has been extended by a remove function, which does not actually delete files on disk but just removes pictures from the preview page - Separate directory for preview files selectable You can now select a separate preview file directory. This allows usage of the fast preview files also with readonly media as CD-ROMs - Different preview file formats which can save disk space You can now select different preview file formats to optimize speed or disk usage (former versions only used the fast but uncompressed P6 format; now IFF or JPeg can also be used for preview files). Helmut Hoffmann's wonderful EGS-TV is now available in a new verison 3.6b. EGS-TV now officially support the ImpactVision IV24 framegrabber. The ImpactVision IV24 users can use EGS-TV for: - A fascinating Blue Screen Keying effect - Record sequences of video directly to harddisk - Comfortably grab an unlimited number of single pictures, view them in separate windows in 24Bit quality in high speed, save them in many formats (e.g. JPeg, IFF24, ...) or transfer them to other programs   - Robert Wiliamson announces the release of several new XPR libraries for XPR awares programs. - xprzedzap.library 3.4 ZedZap, ZedZip, DirectZap, Zmodem, SZmodem with dual-status display support - xprslk.library 1.1 SeaLink OverDrive for EMSI - xprfts.library 1.1 Xmodem, Sealink, Telink, MDM7, DieiIFNA for FTS1 - xprclock.library 0.4 get time from an atomic clock   - Ramiga International i offering another tower system upgrade for A1200 and A4000 owners. The Ramiga Z5 A1200T comes with 5 ZorroII slots and 3 5.25" and 5 3.5" drive bays. The Z7 A4000T has 7 ZorroIII slots, 2 Video slots, 5 PC slots, 6 5.25" and 4 3.5" drive bays. Both system were shown at WoA Show, Dec 94, London.   - A new must have program for all Amiga music fans, AlgoRhythms 3.1, an update to AlgoRhythms 2.0, improvises music over the audio device and a MIDI interface connected to the serial port, is now released. Features: - overhauled GadTools interface - Arexx - AmigaGuide help - asl file requester - AlgoRhythms as default tool on form file icons - 20 voices - 21 scales - save output to standard MIDI files - plays 400+ notes/sec on a 68030/68882 at 25MHz - Uses flat pseudo-random numbers to make a variety of music. Check AmiNet for availability.   - Oxxi reports that the long awaited text editor TurboText TT is now finaly out in version 2.0! upgrade fee for the current owners is 20$. There are litterally hundreds of enhancements throughout the new version , but the main improvments are: - Performance has been substantially increased throughout, in virtually every area. - The ASL file, font, and screen mode requesters are now used. - The user-interface is now fully font-sensitive. - There is full on-line AmigaGuide documentation and help. - The program generally uses much less memory, especially with large documents in systems that run MungWall. - Each document window can now have its own menu strip, font, text color, keyboard bindings, etc. - Each document window can now be opened on separate public screens. - The Find and Find & Change windows now feature history in their text gadgets. - TurboText takes advantage of AmigaDOS 3.0/3.1 features, such as new look menus, system busy pointer, full system pen selection support, multi-character menu shortcut keys, and other miscellaneous items. Oxxi Inc. Box 90309, Long Beach, CA 90809, USA voice 310-427-1227 fax 310-427-0971   - Peter Deane announces the release of the BBS program OzMetro version 2.0 Key features for version 2.0: - Very easy to run setup program for initial configuration - Ability to recover online user after a reboot - Powerful "Amigatised" sysop maintenance program with menus, gadgets, etc - Fully configurable file areas with control over uploads, downloads and "listabilty" for every area - Abilith optional MicroWeave printing. Resolutions are selected by the Preferences density setting: Density 1 180x180 Density 2 360x180 Denisty 3 360x360 Denisty 4 360x360, MicroWeave Denisty 5 720x720 Density 6 720x720, MicroWeave Density 7 720x720, MicroWeave (identical to Denisty 6) The driver implements horizontal and verical whitespace stripping, as well as Epson compression mode 2 ("TIFF v4.0 packbits mode") to minimize the amount of data that must be sent to the printer and improve printing speed. A beta tester reported speed on an Amiga 3000 comperable to that of a 66MHz 486 with Epson's MS-Windows driver. The driver implements a very simple color correction for 720dpi modes to prevent them from printing excessively dark. This gives results similar to other drivers on the same printer (for example, the PageStream 2.x LQ2550C driver). "Endicor Technologies, Inc." is investigating a future update with improved color correction, which will provide more accurate colors and better gradation. Contact Endicor Technologies, Inc. at: P.O. Box 29000 #355 San Antonio, TX 78229 USA Internet: info@endicor.com, sales@endicor.com Voice/Fax: 1-210-650-4988   - The US company Softwood is working on a new spreadsheet program for the Amiga. It will blow away anything out for the Amiga to date. Supposedly it will be on the scale of Excel. FinalCalc (FC) is a high-end spread- sheet that aims at providing the Amiga with something to compete with the top spreadsheets in the 'outside world'. Its main formula recalc engine has been written to be significantly more powerful than the current generation of spreadsheets. The engine always does a 'natural' recalc. i.e. formulas are evaluated in the order of their inter-dependancies, no matter how complex, making sure that the result of a formula is correct. The recalc engine always runs in the _background_. The user never waits for FC to recalculate. You keep on editing cells while FC chugs along in the background, catching up and updating the display as you work. This is very smooth and has to be used to be believed. Even with this, the recalc code itself is very fast anyway, recalculating only what has changed or needs to be recalculated, not the entire project. FinalCalc's user interface is designed to be both easy to use, and power-user friendly. Everything is keyboard/hotkey driven as well as mouse driven. Almost every function, requester, feature can be controlled from the keyboard without using the mouse. The user interface can come up on any screen mode and use any Amiga font, even changing the screen mode and/or the user font on the fly. FinalCalc supports multiple sheets per 'Project'. (a project can consist of 1 to 254 sheets, each containing a maximum of ZZZ (18277) columns and 65000 rows.) FinalCalc has very powerful printing features, great 2D and 3D graphs, more than 630 arexx/script commands, and tons of features.   - The WARP System, a Transputer System for the Amiga, from the US company Cybernetic, is now released. The specs for the WARP are very impressive. WARP basically allows you to load off cpu intensive tasks to Transputer boards using the Warp OS. You can add as many boards as you want to your system, increasing performance proportionally. The base board does around 50 Mips and installs in a Zorro slot. The other boards (Warp Twin 70 Mips, Warp Tripple 105 Mips) are then connected to the base board. System comparisons to an Amiga 4000/40 are quite impressive, a render that take around 1 hour on an A4000/40, take around 50 seconds on a 1000 Mips Warp system. A Warp System adapted (rendering engine) for Adspec's Aladdin 4D is available, others including Real3D and Lightwave are to follow. Cybernetic also announces Cybernetica's "Reality Prime Engine Series" of software, a system of modules designed to work initially with Warp System, and later with other software on a standard Amiga. These releases, each with the engine tag, will add a host of options for 3D animators. The lineup is slated LighEngine (for ray-tracing and radiosity), Physics (for animation control), Paint (for image-processing, compositing and painting), Modeling, Animation, Morphing, Particle, Sound, Video and more. The releases will be staggered. The Light Engine and Cybernetica's Newton's Law (animation module for LightWave) have already been released.   - The German company Irsee Software announces the release of it's printing program TurboPrint Professional version 3.0. The new version has among other imrpovments the following features: - 16 Milions colour support - 256 greyscales for 8 bit b/w pix - Support for GFX boards - Gammacorrection - Support for the new inkjets from HP (600x360dpi), Canon (600x360 dpi) , Epson (Stylus Color 720x720 dpi) etc Contact IrseeSoft at: Am Schlachtbichel 1, D-8951 Irsee Germany   - The US company FutureVideo announces the release it's all new V-Station 3300 for the NewTek's Video Toaster. The A/B roll hardware/software video editor combines the power of a multitasking, multiple event editor with the versatility of the Video Toaster's effects, character generation and framestores. V-Station 3300 is capable of direct AREXX communication with the Toaster, allowing all of the Toaster's settings to be read directly back to the V-Station and saved as part of the event record. Using intuitive, point-and-click interface and armed with an online help system, easy-to-read software screens, and a built-in Tape Logging capability, video editing has never been easier. V-Station 3300 is compatible with various "prosumer" VCRs and camcorders fitted with Panasonic's Control-M or Sony's Control-L (LANC). Powerful options including VTR Driver Kits, SMPTE/EBU time code (LTC) readers, uppgradeable software and controller firmware are also available.   - PRESS RELEASE! This info directly from Intellegent Designs, Inc. AmiBack version 3.0 will support the new parallel port tape drives. Intellegent Designs, Inc. (IDI) has now taken over Moonlighter's products (AmiBack, TapeWORM etc) and announces the continuing development of the AmiBack 3.0 and TapeWorm 2.0. Contact them at: Intellegent Designs, Inc. 2925 East Colonial Drive Orlando, FL 32803 - CanDo, the Amiga authoring software, version 3.0 with a lot of new features is now released. The most welcome addition is a new debugger for debugging CanDo multimedia applications and 53 window/screen transition effects. The long awaited CanDo Debugger is now available from Inovatronics, Inc. too. Inovatronics, Inc. 8499 Greenville Ave. Suite 209B USA Voice : (214) 340-4991 FAX : (214) 340-8514 - The TypeSmith 2.5a update is now available from SoftLogic. Version 2.5a is aminly a bug fixed version that fixes a few small problems including the Print Overview. TypeSmith is SoftLogics Powerful font designer. TypeSmith converts MacBinary or PC TrueType fonts to any other format (PostScript Type 1 and Type 3, Intellifont, IFF RFF, DMF). Also, it can export any font as a high quality TrueType font with instructions (hints). Another nice feature is the automatic point reduction algorithm which allows you to clean up badly designed fonts. The new overview printing feature prints complete character set tables to any printer. The new version 2.5a can, using it's all new extensive Batch Convert AREXX macro, convert entire directories of fonts at the press of a function key. This enable you to include fonts from any format into programs such as PageStream, Art Expression, Professional Page, DeluxePaint, Final Writer , Brilliance, WordWorth, LightWave and the Toaster character generator. - Just to make it clear; RCS managment in Montreal are in business and are developing their promissed 68060 board for desktop Amigas. The Motorola's 68060 containf a FPU, an MMU and a new feature called SuperScalar, which enables the unit to detect, dispatch, excute and return from more than one instruction during each cycle. Registered users of Fusion Forty should contact RCS for uppgrade information. RCS Managment. Phone: 514-926-3755 FAX 514-926-3131.   - We have been informed that the OWL Software company has released yet another educational Amiga software, Physics Laboratory in Mechanics. The PLM covers kinematics, dynamics, statics, universal gravitation, work and energy, impulse and momentum, and rotation. 3 experiments ,easy/medium/hard, are given in each subject area, with a logical progression between them. One part of the program is the history and picture section, with a summary of the basis of the experiment and either its creator or the scientist who developed an important concept behind it. Contact OWL Software and the auther of the mention package, Lori Vinciguerra at: OWL Software 460 Summer Avenue Reading, MA 01867-3819 EMail: owl@davinci.reading.ma.us BBS: 617-942-7216   - The German based company MacroSystem has finaly released it's long awaited nonlinear editing system, V-Lab Motion. The board fits in any Zorro equipped Amiga and can record full-motion, high quality video to your harddisk from any source. It offers JPEG compression/ decompression via a high speed integrated circuit for real time results, genlocking, chromakeying and a very powerful editing system. For more information contact MacroSystem. FAX: Germany-2302-80884   - The new multimedia authoring software for the Amiga, InterPlay for the Amiga 2000/3000/4000, allows creation of MultiMedia CDs. InterPlay features an intuitive point-and-click WYSIWYG interface and requires 4 MB of memory to operate.   - The wait is over ;-) The UK based company Almathera is finaly due to the immediate release of it's long-awaited program, Photogenics. Being called "The Next Generation Image Processor", Photogenics is a hybrid of an image processor and paint package. Photogenics combines the features of a powerful image manipulation package with the ease-of-use and creative freedom of a traditional paint program. You can load a variety of different images (JPEG, GIF, IFF, etc.) and save them in different formats, but Photogenics is much more than just a simple conversion system. Artists will love the multiple built in natural brushes (chalk, pencil, pastel, etc...), or you may perfer to retouch pictures with the airbrush. Through the variety of operations and the powerful visual alpha channels, image manipulation has never been so enjoyable. You can edit multiple images - each in its own resizable window. The realtime HAM-8 display gives you full-colour painting without needing a 24-bit graphics board. Photogenics's interface allows you to work on several images at one time by opening a re-sizeable window for each one. Thanks to the program's open architecture, you will be able to add your own effects, loaders and savers. Designed for graphics artists and serious painters, Photogenics gives a professional working environment offering many features not even found on PC or Mac packages. The open-architecture design gives programmers the freedom of writing their own loaders, savers or effects. Photogenics will be introduced at the World of Amiga show on Dec 94.   - SunRize Industries announces the release of it's SoundSwitch eight channel audio mixer. It puts the Video Toaster in complete control of up to four stereo sources so you won't have to click on a Crouton while moving slider controls on a mixer simultaneously. Just plug SoundSwitch into your floopy drive port, click on a Crouton, and voila... you've switched your audio with your video. It automaticaölly switches to the correct audio sources when you do a transition and performs cross-fades flawlessly. SoundSwitch sounds even better than your CD player with it's dynamic range of 95! decibels. SoundSwitch includes the Mixer, Meter and SMPTE modules from SunRize's studio 16. It's compatible with any edit controller for the Video Toaster, including NewTek's Video Toaster Flyer and RGB's AmiLink.   - An all new version of the wonderful DiskSalv 3.0 version 11.32 (4Q/94), the original Amiga disk recovery tool is now released. Developed by Dave Haynie and published by Intangible Assets Manufacturing, it is the fourth major revision of DiskSalv, and it offers features never before found in DiskSalv or other Amiga disk utilities. DiskSalv 3.0 v11.32 features: - A Hot New Look The old user interface has been completely reworked. While the best features have been retained, much has been improved. The font sensitivity is better than everThe overall look is cleaner, with graphical queues throughout that enhance operations without making undue demands on your system's memory or pretending to be a video game. Gadgets and help texts are context sensitive. Device selection throughout is drag-and-drop, though of course enhanced list selection is still available for the asking. Interactive AmigaGuide links are provided for every gadget and menu function. - An Ounce of Prevention A disk can now be checked for troubles without actually making any repairs, for extra confidence. Deleted directories, files, and data can be permanently erased for added security, program releases, etc. Traditional full or incremental backups are supported, in the same style as DiskSalv's recovery functions. - And a Pound of Cure You still get traditional DiskSalv functions, only better. Undeletes can often be performed in-place. A fully redesigned filter mechanism supports pattern matching on full pathnames, file notes, dates, file sizes, and/or protection bits. Pattern matches can be used to include a file in a scan, exclude it, or stop a scan on a match. Any number of filter groups may be active at the same time, and such groups may be loaded from disk. - When Time Counts A new intelligent prefetching disk cache, buffered file I/O, and improved internal design makes DiskSalv faster than ever. The scroll bar calculations have been refined for greater accuracy. - There's Nothing to Lose Device description editing and volume searching functions have been greatly enhanced. DiskSalv can freely convert between its internal device format, standard Amiga ASCII format (DOSDrivers files), and Rigid Disk Blocks (the standard autoboot format). - Going by the Book A complete, on-line AmigaGuide manual is included to aid both beginner and advanced user. Details range from the basics through a complete theory of operation. Decriptions of all DiskSalv file formats and associated C Language "include" files are also supplied. For more information contact: Intangible Assets Manufacturing 828 Ormond Avenue Drexel Hill, PA 19026-2604 USA Phone 610-853 4406 fax: 610 853 3733   - SoftWood new Database program for the Amgia, "Final Data" version 1.0 is now released. Final Data is an easy-to-use, flat file data manager. Final Data's purpose is to provide a simple, yet powerful way for people to orgainize and print lists of information on their Amiga. It is ideal for tasks such as: - name and adress lists (friends, customers, business contacts, etc.) - collections of any type (video, CD, stamp, coin, etc.) - reference material such as titles of books and periodicals - home inventory, bills, birthday reminders, and appointments A Final Data database appears on the screen as a table with rows and columns similar to the way a spreadsheet looks. Viewing a database in this manner lets you look at a lot of information at the same time. Columns may be narrowed or widened by dragging a column's border with the mouse. Data is entered into cells in a similar manner as entering data into a word processor or text editor. As you go from cell to cell entering data the program verifies that the information you enter is consistent with the type of information expected. Final Data can arrange data in any desired sequence. A unique feature gives you the option of sorting either an entire database or only selected rows. The search and replace feature lets you make changes in the same manner as in a word processor. You can print a database in either label or columnar report format. Final Data prints reports complete with page headings that included title and page number. Reports may also be printed with totals and row counts. Labels can be defined in a variety of user-defined formats. Labels can be printed from one to many across a page. Final Data uses a printer's built-in fonts for maximum speed and readability. Final Data was programmed fromthe beginning with ARexx in mind. There are over 75 Final Data ARexx commands that you can use to develop scripts. There is also a user-defined ARexx menu you can use to access your scripts.   - Just a note for those of you interesting in genealogy programs. The US based company "The Puzzle Factory, Inc." distributes "Origins", the original genealogy program for the Amiga and the first one of it's kind to supports multiplatform file format "GEDCOM". Contact The Puzzle Factory, Inc. for more information: Puzzle Factory Veneta, Oregon USA Phone: +503 935-3709 BBS: +503 935-7883 EMail: jlavin@efn.org Puzzle Factory European distributor Helios Software 163 Huthwaite Road Sutton-in-Ashfield Notts. NG17 2 HB England Phone: +623 554828 - A new version 3.0 of the PC-Task, the software only Intel 80X86 emulator, version 3.0 is now released The following features are included in release version 3.0: - Switchable Intel X86 CPU emulation - Support for up to 16MB RAM (15MB extended) - Up to 2 floppy drives and 2 hard drives supported - Supports hard disk files and hard disk partitions - High density floppies and CD-ROM support - Select from MDA, CGA, EGA, VGA and SVGA (512K-2MB) video modes - Support for up to 256 colours on AGA machines - Compatible with graphic boards (eg. EGS Spectrum, Picasso) - Parallel, Serial and PC speaker emulation - Mouse support, including Serial Mouse emulation - Run multiple PC-Task processes on the same machine - Run MS-DOS applications in a window on a public screen (eg. Workbench) - Transfer files between your Amiga and MS-DOS - Support for David Salamon's GoldenGate bridge cards - Compatible with MS Windows 3.0 - 3.11 for more information contact: Quasar Distribution __ P.O. Box 188 / /\ Southland __ / / / A Victoria 3192 /_/\/ / / G Australia \ \ \/ / I   \ \ / M Phone +61 3 583 8806 \_\/ A Fax +61 3 585 1074 BBS +61 3 584 8590   - The Edge text editor for the Amiga is now available in an all new version 2.0. Edge 2.0 features among other improvments: - Addition of the all new Quick Tools. Quick Tools allows the addition of a DockMenu (a'la ToolManager) for the most used functions. - Asyncrons windows. - Additional configurability - Unlimited numbers of view for unlimited numbers of windows! - You can now assign a title to each "Mark Locations" and more   - MacroSystem Develpment Inc is working on it's 68060 version of the "Warp Engine". TransWarpEngine, the 68060 baby, will be available for Amiga 2000/3000/4000   - Digita International, the good company that gave us the mind blasting program, WordWorth, announces the release of an all new personal database manager, named DataStore, for the Amiga. DataStore's main features include: - Toolbar - VCR button style Navigator - Form design tools to draw fields, boxes, graphic and text frames - Form design grid - EasyStart Templates (recipes, address book, gardener's guide, home inventory, magazine guide, CD/video catalog, Amiga product guide, club membership) - AmigaGuide help system - AmigaDOS3 Datatype compatible - Insert text clips (Librarian) - Multiple file editing - AutoBackup - Unlimited records (limited only by ram) - Create new database file from selected records - Add, edit, resize or remove fields at any time - Field types: text, numbers, currency, true/false, yes/no, date - Mail-merge with Wordworth - Forms with text and graphics - Sophisticated queries Datastore will be available in mid-December at a direct price of $95.   - Xa-qwk.library, an Amiga shared run time library that allows for the manipulation of QWK message packets, is released now. The package features among others: - The ability to translate and generate the .ndx files. - The ability to read, parse and write the control.dat file. - Load the message header and text in one function call. - Write the message header and text in one function call. - And more   - US company Blue Ribbon is marketing a new music board called "One-Stop- Musioc-Shop". Being a Zorro 2 board, it features: - Midi interface with 48 channels (== 4 seperate MIDI outs) - A synthesizer consisting of the Emu Protheus sound engine and 4 MB ROM Samples from the Protheus and Emulator libraries. - fully support by Bars&Pipes Pro (instead of MIDI output or internal Amiga 8bit-sound.) - Integrated DSP for onboard F/X (also from the Protheus).   - The very long awaited Amiga port of the XV, the interactive image display for the X Window System X11, is now released. Amiga Xv, now in version 1.12 is an AmigaDos 3.X program that features among others: - Display an image in a window on the screen - Display an image on the root window, in a variety of styles - Arbitrarily stretch or compress the image - Rotate the image in 90-degree steps - Flip the image around the horizontal or vertical axes - Crop a rectangular portion of the image - Magnify any portion of the image by any amount, up to the size of the screen - Determine pixel values and x,y coordinates in the image - Adjust image brightness and contrast with a gamma correction function - Apply different gamma functions to the Red, Green, and Blue color components, to correct for non-linear color response - Adjust global image saturation - Perform global hue remapping - Edit an image's colormap - Reduce the number of colors in an image - Dither in color and b&w - Smooth an image - Crop off solid borders automatically - Convert image formats - Generate Encapsulated PostScript. The Automatic Checkbook Balancing Module still isn't completely debugged, and is planed for the next version.   - Walnut Creek announce the release of 2 new CDs for the Amiga. - "Internet Info" CD contains 12000 FAQ about all different subjetcs. - "Space & Astronomy" CD contains 1080 picture of the Earth etc and 5000 text files with everything you want to know about Astronomy, NASA's press releases since 1962 etc.   - Pure Logic Software (Quincy, CA, USA) is shipping On The Ball version 1.3: a calendar, addressbook, notepad, todolist personal information manager program for the Amiga. Among new features for the new version Pure Logic mentions: - Over 50 new features, enhancements, and fixes over the previous version, v1.20. - Smart Reminders - Ability to create shadow appointments. - Ability to see reminders from when computer was off or OTB was not running. - Ability to set/disable all reminder options attributes globally or to individual appointments. - Addressbook Printouts - Create custom phone or address lists in addition to custom mailing labels. - Modular Save files - Save selected entries into a new project file. - Merge a project into the current one.   On The Ball, may be ordered from Amiga dealers or directly from Pure Logic Software for $40. Pure Logic Software, 789 Butterfly Road Quincy, CA 95971 USA   - Cloanto from Italy announces the release of it's low cost painting package, Personal Paint version 6.1. The new version supports among other improvments, animation with StoryBoard, complete support for ALL Amiga graphic boards, virtuel memory managment, possibility to print 24 bit picture and is reported to be much faster. EMail: 100145.15@compuserve.com  - ImageStudio version 1.1.0 is now released. ImageStudio is the low cost solution for image processing on the Amiga. It features among other: - General: - Full 24-bit image buffers, with optimizations for colour-mapped (palette based) images. - Up to 100 levels of undo / redo. - User configurable virtual memory. - User saveable preferences. - Operations applicable to the whole image or a selected region. - Up to 256 greyshade preview window (with optional dither). - Zoom on preview window. - Internal / external viewers (external for 3rd party 24-bit graphics cards). - Loading / saving / manipulating of AGA image formats (e.g. 256 colours, HAM8) on non-AGA machines. - Max image size of 32000 x 32000. - Copy / paste to / from the system clipboard. - Runs on all Workbench 2.04+ Amiga's - utilises AGA chipset if available. - On disk AmigaGuide, ASCII text documentation, TeX `.dvi' and PostScript. - Multi-level help error requesters. - Standard Workbench2 interface. - Public screen. - Requires no third party libraries or utilities. - Import: - IFF-ILBM formats (Standard palette based, HAM6, HAM8, extra halfbright, ILBM24) - BMP - GIF (conforming to GIF87a) - JPEG (conforming to JFIF standard) - PCX - Targa - Any installed Amiga datatype (with Workbench 2.1+) - Export: - IFF-ILBM formats (Standard palette based, HAM6, HAM8, extra halfbright, ILBM24) - BMP - EPS - GIF (conforming to GIF87a) - JPEG (conforming to JFIF standard) - PCX - Targa - Colour Balance: - All operations are available to the R,G,B components separately. - Brightness ( upto ±100%) - Contrast (non to full) - Gamma ( + and - ) - Convolution: - Built in convolutions: Blur, Sharpen, Emboss, Raise, Edge detect. - User definable convolutions, load and save to disk. - Effects: - Built in effects: FlipX, FlipY, RollX, RollY, Negative, Greyscale, Highlight, Shadow, Random, Pixelize, Remove isolated pixels. - Scale: - Crop to selected region. - Increase / decrease scale by percentage or absolute image size. - Simple scale or colour averaged. - Colour reduction: - Increase colour mapped images to 24-bit. - Decrease number of colours in 24-bit or colour mapped images via Heckbert median cut algorithm. - Dithers available for colour reduction: None, Floyd-Steinberg, Burkes, Stucki, Sierra, Jarvis, Stevenson-Arce. - Palette: - Edit palette colours and ranges. - Save current palette. - Force palette onto current image, dithering if necessary (all dithers available).   - The French company Archos is the maker of the "OverDrive CD" for the Amiga 1200. "OverDrive CD" is suited for connection to the Amiga 1200 using Amiga's PCMCIA port. It's multisession and Kodak PhotoCD compatible drive and sports 300 KB/Sec. It understands the audio CDs and CD+G format and can even emulate an CD32. Most CD32 games works using it.   - Amiga Library Service announces the release of it's "Fresh Fonts CD- ROM, Volume 1". Most of the fonts on the CD are made available in different file formats: - Adobe (can be used on any system, also used for Postscript) - Truetype (native fonts of PC-Windows) - Intellifonts (Agfa Intellifonts, native Amiga format, also common on Mac) - Amiga Bitmap (Amiga computers only) - DMF (Amiga DTP program Pagestream 3.0 format) This makes the CD apparently very useful in multiplatform environments found in design and video studios, as well as private use at home. The fonts covers the largest part of the CD, with about 400 MB. The rest is covered by programs for Amiga, Mac, Acorn and PC. Contact address: Amiga Library Services 610 North Alma School Road , Suite 18 Chandler, AZ 85244-3687 USA Telephone: (602) 917-0917 Fax: (602) 917-0917   - Bruce Smith Books has published yet another Amiga book. This time "Amiga Assembler Inside Guide", ISDN: 1-873308-27-2. "Amiga Assembler Inside Guide" writen by the Amiga Guru Paul Overaa learn programing 680X0 on the Amiga in a system freindly manner. Other Amiga titles from Bruce Smith Books are: - Mastering AmigaDos 2, Vol 2 - Mastering AmigaDos 3, Tutorial - Mastering AmigaDos 3, Reference - Mastering Amiga C - Mastering System __ - Mastering Assembler / /\ - Mastering Amos __ / / / A - Mastering Arexx /_/\/ / / G - WorkBench 3.0 A-Z \ \ \/ / I - Assembler Inside Guide \ \ / M - Amiga 1200 Insider Guide \_\/ A - Amiga 1200 Insider Next Steps   - WordWorth version 3.1 from Digita International is out now. Upgrade fee from version 3.0 is £14.99. The version 3.0 of WordWorth has these specification: - DISPLAY - Always WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) display from screen to printed page. - Tool bar which may be costomised from a range of large or small icons. Perform over 100 tasks by simply clicking an icon. - Human Interface Protocol(tm) v2, combines Workbench look and feel with the new super-intuitive HIP(tm) style. - Zoom magnification from 25 to 400% in 1% steps. - Sizes: A3, A4, A5, US standard and legal, wide tractor (132 column), custom, facing pages. - Columns (1-32),with variable gutters. - Tableswith calculations - Personalised standard letters with mailing database (mail merging) - Margins left, right, top, bottom (optional show or hide). - Multi-line, mixed font, headers and footers (left and right) displayed on screen. - User definable colours for background and text, with background cocktail colour themes. - Switch screenmodes at any time. All Amiga resolutions supported. - Screen saver, clock and playtime game. - Comprehensive settings so that you can customise Wordworth just the way you like it. - EDITING - Cut,copy, paste, erase text; drag and drop editing. - Copy and paste paragraph format. - Undo or repeat last operation. - Go to page, bookmark and endnote. - Find and replace (word, typeface, stype and special characters). - British English Collins spelling checker provided by Proximity Collins Linguibase. - 110,370 word dictionary with hyphenation. - 26,000 Merriam-Websters legal medical supplement. - Check word, document, or as you type. - Foreign language dictionaries available. - British Collins Thesaurus provided by Proximity Collins with 826,000 synonyms. - Digisense - built in intelligence: - Auto correct, corrects as you type. - Librarian, like a real library, lets you store text from documents and easily recall it at any time. - Table of contents and list generator. - Index creator. - Endnotes and bookmarks. - Speech - speak selectio, whole document, speak as you type. - Optional display for hidden codes like carriage return, tabs, spaces and special codes. - Full support of Commodore keypad commands (PageUp, Help, etc). - Swap adjacent characters. - Case conversion. - TEXT FORMATTING - Agfa® Intellifont® technology, which provides scalable fonts from 3 to over 1,000 points in size. - Font support includes Compugraphic® outline fonts, Adobe PostScript fonts, TrueType® fonts, Amiga bit-mapped fonts, and Printer fonts. - Styles bold, italic, underline, plain, subscript, superscript. - Kerning (two styles), character tracking and paragraph spacing control. - Automatic and manual line spacing. - Alignment left, centre, right, justified. - TextEffects(tm), create eye-catching effects with text, colours and shadows, including rotation, corcle, spiral and arc. - Text frames. - Widow and orphan control. - Hyphenation by paragraph. - Text sorting. - Indents from left, right, first line. - Vertical and horizontal rulers (optional show or hide). - Measurements in inch, cm, mm, pica, point. - Tabs left, right, centre, decimal (with custom spacing character). - 5 Time styles (fixed orupdating). - 10 Date styles (fixed or updating). - Page numbering (5 styles), with auto count. - Text statistics include (for all or selected text) number of pages, paragraphs, lines, words, characters, pictures. (An Amiga fitted with atleast a 68020 processor is required to use TrueType® fonts.) - GRAPHICS - Drawing tools let you freely draw lines, boxes, circles, text frames and TextEffects(tm) straight onto the page. - Lines: set line style, thickness, colour, endings, Boxes and circles: set border style, thickness, fill, colour. - Hot link support. - Cut, copy, paste, erase graphics; drag and drop editing. - Re-sized or re-scaled on page. - Text auto flow left or right, vertical or contoured around image. - Graphic file formats supported: IFF (including HAM and Extra Half Brute), PCX, BMP, GIF, TIFF, and IMG bitmapped formats. CGM, EPS and GEM scalable formats. - Fonts provided by AGFA - PRINTING - Prints text and graphics at the highest resolution of your printer. You can't print at any better quality. - Includes Digita Print Manager, worth £39,99, which maximises the quality and performance of any printer by substituting special Digita printer drivers. - Support for over 400 printers using their built-in fonts (both proportional and mono-space). On-screen representation of printer's font to maintain WYSIWYG integrity. - Landscape printing. - Print EPS graphics with non-PostScript printers (hard disk only). - PostScript printer driver for standard Adobe 35 fonts, with screen font versions. Also rotation, oage scaling, graphics, EPS import and PostScript disk file creation. - Graphics, colour or grayscale shading. - DOCUMENTATION - Instruction book - 333 pages, with detailed tutorials, reference section, typography explained and over 150 illustrations. - On-line Amigaguide help whenever you need, so you can learn Wordworth as you use it. - Personal registration number - your passport to on-going technical support and updates. - FILE HANDELING - Open documents created in any previous version of Wordworth. - Easy modular auto-install for hard or floppy disk. - Timed auto save and backup, with reminder. - Revert to last saved document. - Open multiple documents. - Templates - Mail-merge (supports Digita Mailshot Plus, Digita Datastore, Superbase, DIF, ASCII), with powerful costomisation facilities. - Text file formats supported: ASCII, MSWorks for Windows, MSWindows Write, Word for DOS, Wordstar, WordPerfect for DOS, and RTF. The Wordworth English language dictionary and thesaurus can be easily substituted with one of the following: French, Italian, German   - An Amiga version of the UNIX utility XAnim is under development. Amiga XAnim understands QuickTime, AVI, Fli/Flc to name a few.   - The UK company HiSoft announces the release of it's long awaited HighSpeed Pascal all new version 1.20. HighSpeed Pascal is an Amiga Pascal compiler that is very nearly 100% compatible with Turbo Pascal 5.0. Users of the version 1.10 can upgrade for 9.95 UK Pounds + postage. Contact HiSoft at: HiSoft, The Old School Greenfield, Bedford England MK45 5DE   Telephone: +44 525 718181 FAX: +44 525 713716 E-mail: hisoft@cix.compulink.co.uk   - The UK company HiSoft announces the release of it's "The HiSoft Language CD-ROM". The CD will contain the latest versions of all three language packages; Devpac, HighSpeed Pascal and HighSpeed Basic. Each system is supplied ready to run from the CD, with installation programs to install the individual programs onto your hard disk. Full on-line documentation for each package using AmigaGuide is also included. Contact HiSoft at: HiSoft, The Old School __ Greenfield, Bedford / /\ England MK45 5DE __ / / / A /_/\/ / / G Telephone: +44 525 718181 \ \ \/ / I FAX: +44 525 713716 \ \ / M E-mail: hisoft@cix.compulink.co.uk \_\/ A   - The German company HK-Computer announces the release of it's SCSI controller + 2 MB memory for the C= A570 CD-ROM. Contact HK-Computer at: Tel: +46-221-369062 Fax: +46-221-369065   - The Netherland based company Lyppens Software Productions announces the release of Video Backup System, VBS, version 3.0. Major features of the new version include: - User interface The VBS 3.0 software is compatible with all Amigas and requires AmigaOS 2.x/3.x or higher. VBS is now even easier to use and has a completely redone 2.0-look user interface. You can customize it by means of font and screen mode-requesters. VBS can also run on the Workbench-screen. - Speed There are new backup modes for Amigas with an 68020 or higher CPU (A1200, A2500, A3000, A4000). The first one gives a speed improvement of a factor 2 compared to V1.5, without data compression. The typical thoughput in this case is 85MB per hour, for a total of 340MB per 4-hour video tape! The other new mode adds data compression to this, and is up to 3 times as fast as V1.5 (depending on the compression ratio achieved). With 130MB per hour, 520MB will fit on a 4-hour tape. VBS 3.0 can read and write V1.5 backups without problems. - Partial Restore In 3.0, it is no longer necessary to replay the entire backup when only a few files are to be restored. After VBS has read the directory tree structure from the VCR, the tape can be fast forwarded if the desired file is far away from the beginning. During Restore and Verify, VBS displays on the screen which file and directory it is currently working on. - Counter type VBS now supports VCRs having a numeric instead of a real-time counter. - Settings VBS now has a requester for the following settings: - Counter type (Numeric/Time). - Video Connection Check (on/off). - Use Public screen (on/off). - Beep after backup (on/off). - Log file/Report directory. - Fonts for user interface and Visual Header. - Screen mode. - Batch Backup The Video Backup System now lets you define a list of backups to be made. Previously, it was necessary to manually make a separate backup for each hard disk partition. With VBS 3.0, you simply enter the desired partitions in the batch list. VBS will then successively make separate backups for each one of these partitions. The batch backup can be programmed to start either at a specific time-of-day or directly. If desired, the software can give an audio signal when the backup(s) are ready. - Installer Installation of VBS 3.0 on your hard drive is done using the Commodore Installer: user friendly and trouble-free.   For more information on VBS and the 3.0 upgrade package contact: Lyppens Software Productions Generaal Coenderslaan 25 5623 LT Eindhoven The Netherlands Phone/Fax: +31-40-461403   - Long awaited Aminet CD 4 is now shipping. Aminet CD 4 contains 1.1 Gigabytes of freely distributable software, The newest file included is dated Oct 8th. The space is used as follows:   1700 Modules 1600 Utilities 250 Games 100 Demos 80 Animations   The CD can be ordered from the following addresses: (credit cards OK) Germany: Stefan Ossowski Tel: +49-201-788778 (English spoken) Fax: +49-201-798447 Email: stefano@tchest.e.eunet.de Aminet Gold : DM 29.80, Aminet Share: DM 19.80 USA: Fred Fish Tel: +1-602-917-0917 Fax: +1-602-917-0917 Email: fnf@amigalib.com Aminet Gold : $19.95, Aminet Share: $11.95 - The German company ABF Computer GbR is selling Amiga Link (price 300 DMrk). Amiga Link allows the connection of the Amiga to other systems. ABF Computer GbR Postfach 40 01 43 D-70401 Stuttgart Phone +49-(0)7152-937904 Fax +49-(0)7152-937905   - The long awaited GTDriver version 1.0 is finally released. GTDriver is a new and powerful driver for graphic tablets and serial mouses. Current version supports the following the following tablets and mice: - Summagraphics MM - Summagraphics Bitpadone - CalComp 2000 - Cherry - TekTronix 4957 - Wacom - Microsoft mouse - Mouse System mouse   - Dale L. Larson, Intangible Assets Manufacturing announces the release of the 'Connect your Amiga!' - A book and guide to Amiga networking. 'Connect your Amiga!' is a guide to the networking capabilities of the Amiga. The book written by Dale Larson, former Software Engineer at the networking group of Commodore, is an expedition into the cyberspace and the world at the other end of your network hardware. The ISBN number for this book is 1-885876-02-5. Contact Dale L. Larson at: Dale L. Larson, Intangible Assets Manufacturing 828 Ormond Avenue Drexel Hill, PA 19026-2604 USA Telephone: (610) 853-4406 Fax: (610) 853-3733 E-mail: info@iam.com   - Helmut Hoffmann announces the release of the long awaited EGSPhotoAlbum Version 1.0, the comfortable picture management and presentation software for EGS equipped Amigas. EGSPhotoAlbum among other features: - Full automatic layout of the preview pages with fixed or variable field size (max. field size can be selected) - Page turning functions to turn the page like in a real PhotoAlbum. - Viewing of pictures in full size by mouse click - An unlimited number of full size picture windows (limited only by memory) can be open at the same time. - Intelligent caching algorithms to hold preview images in memory to redurce waiting time when turning pages - Asynchronous load function which preloads preview pictures during work with EGSPhotoAlbum - Automatic generation of preview files to reduce waiting time for later use of EGSPhotoAlbum (only in full version) - Saving of shown pictures in other file formats or direct transfer to other programs (as ImageFX or PicoPainter) - Easy single or multiselect feature for pictures - Information display for selected picture (name, size, file format) - Font sensitive EGS user interface which can be used even on largest Screens and in full 24Bit color quality.   - AmyNews normaly doesn't cover games but due to the popular demand; Team 17 is working on an Amiga game, Alien Breed 3D. It's a Doom clone that will feature the most advanced engine on the Amiga. It will feature Multi-angle-walls, Light-Source[d], 18+ objects on screen, Optional full screen display, support for HD, Accelerated machines" etc - Nicola Salmoria announces the release of his very long awaited package NewIcons for the Amiga. NewIcons is a revolutionary enhancement to the graphical user interface (GUI) of the Amiga computer. On an AGA machine, the NewIcons package allows users of AGA systems to view icons on their Workbench, independent of the Workbench palette settings. Icons up to 256 colors can be utilized on the standard workbench. A comprehensive set of NewIcon images is included in the package for all the standard Workbench files as well as several other images. The icons in the package are isometric icons drawn by the wellknown artist Roger McVey. The package is available via Anonymous FTP on any Aminet site.   - Ok, good for all you UNIX lowers. One of the most powerful UNIX around, NetBSD operating system, is now available for the Amiga. NetBSD version 1.0 is based on 4.4BSD Lite and Berkeley Networking Release 2 sources. It includes support for shared libraries on most architectures, the enhanced Berkeley Fast File System (which supports 64-bit file sizes and clustering), rock-solid networking code, and a fair amount of binary compatibility with other operating systems. Release 1.0 of the NetBSD operating system is distributed with complete source code and is available for: - Amigas - SPARCstation (sun4c) -class machines - Intel PC clones - Some m68k-based Macintoshes - PC532 - SPARCstation (sun4c) - HP9000/300 family of workstations (for a later release) - AdvancEd from PROXITY SOFTWORKS is a new Amiga text editor that promiss tons of nice feature. AdvancEd will be released soon. Look for more infor about this newcommer in a later issue of AmyNews.   - The German based company Advanced Systems & Software, AS&S, have just announced a 64bit Zorro III gfx board, the CyberVision64. It is based on the Vision864 graphic chip by S3 and allows for a maximum of 4MB DRAM. Running with a pixel clock of 135 Mhz, the maximum resolution is 1280x 1024 256 colours at 72Hz. 24bit modes are available up to a resolution of 800x600. It also features planar to chunky conversion hardware which ought to speed up the emulation. A pass through for the Amiga signal is optional. It has a feature connector for add-ons such as JPEG or MPEG boards. The only software included so far is a workbench emulator. The board was introduced at this years WOC in Cologne but will be shipping by the end of this year for DM 649 for 2MB Version. Contact AS&S at: Tel: (69) 5488130 Fax: (69) 5481845   - AS&S showed the long awaited Cyberstorm 60/50 at the WOC 94. Cyberstorm will be available as soon as Motorola ships the 68060 in quantities. AS&S also plans to release an 060 board running at 80Mhz as soon as the CPUs become available. The Mips ratings are: A4000/40 15.447, Cyberstorm 40 24.896, Cyberstorm 60 82.190. The 060 at 80Mhz is supposed to rate at around 130 Mips.   - The German company Corporate Media announces the release of it's ergonomy keyboard for Desktop Amigas. Contact Corporate Media at: Tel: +46-511-661041 Fax: +46-511-668279   - The German company W.A.W. Electronik is selling a new accelerator device for the C= CDTV. The device comes with a 14.2 MHZ 68020 and a 68881 FPU. Contact W.A.W. Electronik at: Tel: +46-30-4043331 Fax: +46-30-4047039   - Scala MultiMedia SCALA MM400 in now out. It has among tons of other feature: - 10 new effects - Support for direct-digitizing in Scala with FrameMachine or VLab. - The new package comes with a number of most used SCALA EX-modules. - Loads different file formats including TIFF, BMP, FLI/FLC, PhotoCD, GIF, PCX and Datatypes - 5 types of antialiasing - Possibility to run audio/video editing tools directly from Scala.   - OctaMED 5.03 with support for 16-Bit sound cards is released now. More about this in a later issue of AmyNews   - Piccolo-SD64plus from Ingenieurbuero Helfrich is now finaly out. The board features, 64bit-Blitter, Pixelclock 135 MHz and Zorro II/III autosensing.   - The US company Interworks announces the release of new software for the ICard. ICard is a 16 bit ethernet card for the A1200's PCMCIA slot. It provides 10BaseT and 10Base2 ethernet connectorsand SANA II driver for compatibility with any SANA II compatible network protocol including Interworks `ENLAN-DFS'. Contact Interworks at: 43191 Camino Casillas Suite B2469 Temecula, CA 92592-3714 Phone and Fax: (909) 699-8120   - Yeah! ImageFX 2.0 release information is here. NOW! Nova Design, Inc. announces the release of it's powerful image manipulation software for the Amiga, ImageFX version 2.0. ImageFX, PaintFX, AutoFX and CineMORPH are the complete Amiga image manipulation system that combines image processing with amazing special effects technology and professional painting tools that can simulate artistic styles. Look what computer gurus say about ImageFx: - MicroTimes magazine even named ImageFX as one of the Best Products of the year! - Mark Thompson, award winning Amiga animator: "ImageFX 2.0 is absolutely the best image processing and manipulation package I've ever seen on the Amiga." - Shamms Mortier, writer for Amazing and Amiga Format: "The most awesome image manipulation system for the Amiga, period!" - Denny Atkin, Associate Editor OMNI magazine: "Absolutely the most impressive image processing package I've seen on any computer!" ImageFX version 2.0 Features among other: - New System Features - Image Thumbnails Load and save images via interactive visual interface. Preview effects on thumbnails before applying them. - Multiple Buffers Work on an unlimited number of image buffers and brushes. - New Region Controls Add, subtract, or invert regions. Create painting stencils and masks. - Text Generator Create multiple lines of text with justifications and antialiasing. Preview fonts before using them. - Image Compositing New compositing methods including Fast Matte, HSV Matte, Multiply, Divide, Minimum and Maximum. - AutoFX New "cookbook" style batch processor with prewritten scripts to perform hundreds of batch operations and animated effects! - ImageFX Browser Visual image cataloging system for maintaining libraries of pictures and animations. - Documentation Completely rewritten manual with over 400 pages of tutorials and reference. Expanded online help system. -Hardware Support - Graphics Boards Supports all Amiga modes, Retina Z2/Z3, Picasso II, Piccolo, Firecracker 24, IV-24, DCTV, HAM-E, Harlequin, and any EGS-comp. hardware such as the Spectrum, Talon, and Rainbow III. - Scanners Expanded Epson 300/600/800 scanner controls and new support for the VLAB YC framegrabber. - Printers Direct support for the Primera color printer in full color. - New Painting Features Improved soft edge modes and anti-aliasing. Realtime painting tools that emulate traditional media such as Airbrushes, Charcoals, Chalk, Oil and Fingerpaints, Felt Tip Markers, Watercolors, and Crayons! New Draw Modes like Smudge, Roughen, Disperse, Sharpen, and others. Drawing Styles to allow rub through to other images, alpha channels, mandala creation, realistic brush stroke fading, and much more. - New Image Conversion Formats - Amiga Toaster Framestore DPS PAR loader Applied Magic Jstream - Macintosh PICT, including vector and JPEG variations! Improved TIFF loader - MSDOS PIC format for all resolutions and color depths GRASP/GL animation frame loading DL animation frame loading __ - Silicon Graphics / /\ SGI RGB __ / / / A Wavefront /_/\/ / / G Softimage \ \ \/ / I - Others \ \ / M MPEG animation creation and frame extraction \_\/ A X-Windows Abekas A60 series Sun Raster C64 Koala FITS/PDS/Vicar (NASA) image frames - New Special Effects and Image Processing Realistic lightning bolt generator Map images onto spheres Pond ripples and waves Swirl images Advanced lens flares generator Apply paper/canvas textures Water/Glass distortion Image warps and lens effects 3D perspective rotation Expanded 2D rotation PaintFX automatic painting generator Star and supernova generator Crystallization effects Circular blurring effects Standard or circular mosaic effects Straw-like distortions Random tiling effects Median/Minimum/Max. filters Sobel edge-detection Ramping edge-detection Controllable NTSC/PAL Video filters Histogram Equalization tool For further information contact: Nova Design, Inc., 1910 Byrd Avenue, Suite 214, Richmond, Virginia 23230, USA Customer Support/Information (804) 282-6528 For upgrade orders (804) 282-1157 Fax (804) 282-3768 - Good news! The best directory Utility program (DOpus clone) for the Amiga, DirWork version 2.1, is now out. Stay tune for a release info in a later issue of AmyNews. - Oregon Research announces the release of TERMITE, a modern Tele- communication package for the Amiga. Among Termite's features are: - Supports communication speeds from 300 to 115,200 BPS - Flexible Phone Book with unique configurations for each number - Support for Multiple Line BBSs - Configurable review buffer with cut and paste editing - Multi-tasking chat window to prepare text before sending it. - Configurable Text Macros - Font and Screen sensitive displays - Configurable button bar - TERMITE supports XEM and XPR libraries - Assign any program function/macro to the button bar. User can install his own images to the button bar by assign your any IFF brush to the button - Fully AREXX programmable - Automatic Call logging. Know where you were and how much you spent. - AmigaGuide online help TERMITE retails for $49.95. Contact Oregon Research at: 16200 S.W. Pacific Hwy., Suite 162 Tigard, OR 97224 Phone: (503) 620-4919 FAX: (503) 624-2940 - Oregon Research announces the release of the GameSmith Development System for Professional Game development. Over three years in development, the GameSmith Development system gives you the low level power to create the masterpiece of your dreams. With GameSmith you can easily create anything from arcade shoot 'em ups to graphic role playing adventures, from fast scrollers to hair rasing strategy games. The only limit is you imagination. Among other features Oregon Research mentions: - Complete animation system with double buffering - Prioritized object display - Custom Object/Object & Object /Background Collision Detection & Response - Automatic placement and Animation of Multi-Sequenced animated objects - Chain Objects, animating one animates the whole chain! - Automatic Virtual Space object handling - Dynamic Animation Control - Easy to use Joystick polling routines - Very efficient ILBM picture loader - Optional custom encryption to protect your artwork and sounds - Fully AGA compatible - Transparent double buffering - Hardware level smooth scrolling on a per viewport basis - Independently scroll playfields in dual playfield mode - Parallax scrolling - The interactive character animator CITAS for Building up animations graphically - Allow the creation of single object addressable by the system. - Over 350 pages of documentation fully describing the system, utility functions, and over 130 library functions complete with a detailed tutorial and many examples. For more information or a copy of detailed product literature contact Oregon Research. - PageStream version 3.0c patch file is now out :-) (SoftLogic) - An add-in drawing enhancement to PageStream version 3 will be developed and marketed. This should eliminate the need for Art Expression. (SoftLogic) - Newtek has started shipping the long awaited Flyer for the Amiga Toaster Station. Currently only developers and dealers are getting flyers but the mass shipping of the Flyer is getting close. - The US company Opportunity With Learning announces the release of it's new powerful multimedia educational software "Physics Laboratory in Mechanics". The program teaches kinematics, dynamics, statics, universal gravitation, work & energy, impulse & momentum, and rotational kinematics. An interactive laboratory notebook describes and allows the student to simulate 21 different experiments. The notebook gives instruction on how to perform the experiments by using everyday objects. Results are entered into the computerized notebook. An equation animation section teaches students the algebra used when rearranging equations. Also included are history, math, and unit reference sections. Contact Opportunity With Learning at 617-944-1745 - Intangible Assets Manufacturing announces the availability of its "Connect Your Amiga!" T-shirt. It comes in 100% black cotton with color star-chart design and the words "Connect Your Amiga!" List price is $19.95. Contact Intangible Assets Manufacturing (fax) +1 610 853 3733 - German company IngBure Helfrich announces the release of a a MPEG board, called Peggy (FMV card) for the Amiga 4000. SCALA is selling a hardware MPEG card for the ZORRO Amigas too. - DICE v3.0 in a new repacked version is now available to all Amiga programmers. New DICE 3.0 is brought to you by famous Amiga Gurus Matt Dillon (freeware author), Andy Finkel (Amiga OS), John Toebes (Software Distillery) and Bryce Nesbitt (Amiga OS & Enforcer). Now the DICE compiler is part of an integrated "system" of programming tools designed to ease and speed creating programs for the Amiga. For beginners DICE offers an intuitive visual approach to creating programs -- and numerous examples. Programmers of all levels will appreciate how DICE integrates seamlessly with their favorite text editor, offering tools and information at the touch of a button. DICE 3.0 includes: - Complete 450 page manual, including a section on avoiding the most common programming pitfalls. - Full, fast, online help. Help in under a second. - A complete visual compile environment (fully configurable to provide a visual environment for any program). - All the updates, fixes and enhancements you'd expect to the original. - ANSI compatibility. - Romable code generation tools. - Source code management tools. - An easy to use full source level debugger - with the most asked for features to make debugging simple. - A Compression system for use on floppy disk systems. - Two powerful ARexx aware programmer's editors - Full source code for the libraries and dozens of examples. - Comes with AmigaOS 1.3, 2.0, and 3.0 libraries and include files. - ANSI, Unix compatibility, and Amiga link libraries. - A package of "bonus" tools to help find bugs in your code. - Error messages in German, French, Sweedish, English or American. The new DICE is fast, inexpensive, easy, fun and works on any Amiga. DICE is only $150. SAS/C owners pay only $95. For students, DICE is $85. For more information contact (FAX): 919-469-3853, email: info@oic.COM - Torsten Klein announce the release of the scientific program ASpringies version 1.0. ASpringies is a simulator which allows you to interactively create and edit a system of masses and springs. The parameters of the masses and springs (such as mass elasticity and spring K) as well as those of the surrounding system (such as air viscosity and gravity) can be changed. These systems can be loaded and saved into a file. Contact the auther at: Gr.-Kurfuersten-Str. 1 33615 Bielefeld Germany - To all of you fun of the finance software package Phasar. A new version of this program is under development so be happy ;) - David Benn announces the release of the ACE BASIC version 2.3 for the Amiga. ACE BASIC in conjunction with A68K and Blink produces standalone executables. New features in version 2.3 include: Wb 2.x/3.x 3D-look for gadgets and requesters, an interprocess communication mechanism, IFF picture file support, subprogram module/library creation facility, MsgBox can now be used as a command as well as a function, EHB and HAM screen modes (AGA modes in next release), a line continuation character (~), serial status word can now be accessed via SERIAL function, address of SUBs/ external functions via VARPTR/@, reserved words can be listed via a command-line compiler option, FONT and STYLE commands, LONGINT(n) function, SCREEN FORWARD and SCREEN BACK, CLEAR ALLOC command, borderless windows via WINDOW command, GADGET MOD command for modifying existing proportional gadgets, SLEEP FOR command, BEVELBOX command, .bas extension is now recognised as well as .b for ACE source files. Improvements have been made to event trapping, structures, ALLOC, FileBox, executable size, peephole optimisation, external/shared library function syntax, DIM syntax, GADGET syntax, ERR and ON ERROR (window, screen and message error codes), turtle graphics screen aspect ratios. - A new version of TrapFax (version 1.2) with full support for the release version of Class 2.0 is to be released soon. - The US company Endicor Technologies, Inc. announces the release of the long awaited CompuScope 220 Driver (version 1.0) for the CompuScope 220 ISA Digital Oscilloscope board from Gage Scientific. Contact Endicor Technologies, Inc. at (Fax) 1-210-650-4988 - ADVANCED VOICE MAIL AVM v1.42 is now out. AVM software supports multiple voice mailboxs, customized messages, FAX send & receive, scheduling of FAXs, scheduling of outgoing voice messages, remote retreival of voice mail and FAXs, automatic forwarding of voice mail and FAXs, automatic paging (via your telephone pager) when messages are received, built in FAX software, and more. You can also use AVM with GPFax and TrapFAX software. It works with ZyXEL, Dolphin, Linelink, and other modems. Price ranges from 20$ - 50$ - Due to the popular demand; Legendary Technologies is selling LinkIt! Consting 60$, LinkIt! allows you to connect your Amiga to a PC using the Serial or Parallel ports of the systems. It has executable for the Amiga, ms-dos and windows. Using LinkIt! you can transfer files (format conversion is done on the fly using format conversion modules) between connected systems. Extensive AREXX interface allows you to send commands to the remote computer. LinkIt! automatically adjust filenames and file patterns to match the appropriate machine. Amiga version supports GVP's IOExtenderand the Multiface cards. LinkIt! package includes a high speed parallel cable. For further information contact: Legendary Design Technologies Inc. 25 Frontenac Avenue Brantford,ON Canada __ N3R 3B7 / /\ __ / / / A OR /_/\/ / / G \ \ \/ / I Legendary Design Technologies Inc. US Dept. \ \ / M PO Box 1147, \_\/ A Lewiston, NY 14092-8147 USA (519)753-6120 Voice/Fax - Check & Balance from AmiSoft is a new software that let you balans your books and print out your checks. Former Quicken user reports that they prefer Check & Balance for it's ease of use and power. - The German based company MacroSystem has finaly released it's long awaited 24-bit paint program XiPaint version 3.0. It is the first program of it's kind that supports AmigaOS intuition. XiPaint version 3.0 can open unlimited number of picures (your Amiga's memory limit this) and has support for alpha-channel, paint tablets, penselpool and unlimited Undo. XiPaint supports all major graphic boards and has a nice AREXX port ;) For more information contact MacroSystem, FAX, Phone: 2302-80884 - The German company Village Tronic, crew behind the wonderful Picasso I & II graphic board, announces the release of Ariadne, a new network solution for the Amiga. Ariadne is a ethernet board that comes with 2 extra parallel ports. Using the parallel ports an Amiga can be connected to different networks like Novell and TCP/IP. The board supports 10-Base-T and 10-Base-2. - "Black Tie Software" announces the release of several new packages for the Amiga. Among others BTS mentions the following softwares: - "ProWrite Tools" is a collection of highly sophisticated, heavily optimized and fully commented ARexx programs that extend the functionality of ProWrite version 3.3. These tools include a table of contents generator, an index generator and utilities to mark and review table of contents and index entries. - "Structured Clipart" consists of over 240 highly detailed structured images in Adobe Illustrator format. The images have the following features: - Created by Award winning Artist. - Full color images. - Optimized for color and grey-scale printing on laser and dot-matrix printers. - Most images are done a simulated 3D perspective. This collection can be used direcly on the Amiga using the Art Expression, ProVector, PageStream, FinalWriter without he need to purchase an expensive postscript printer. - "Michaels Math Quiz" a game that using high quality graphics, animations and digitized sounds. sharpens the math skills of children 6 years and older. Contact "Black Tie Software" at: USA (614)891-3721 M-F 6-10 PM EST, Sat & Sun 12-10 PM - Did you read the news in a former issue of AmyNews about the all new version of the XCAD-3000? If not, do a search for XCAD in this file first. I had a new fax from Grafx Computing. In the fax, they mention that a new version of the awared winner GFXCAD 3000 is in work. GFX-CAD 3000 consists of four CAD programs in one package, GFX-CAD 3000 comes with the basic drawing engine, XCAD 3000, which consists of both 2-D and 3-D drawing modules. XShell and ZShell, two custom icon-menu interfaces for each module and a stand-alone 2-D version. Priced at apr $1100 (imagine version 3.0 counted), this package outperforms the combination of the AutoCad, 3-D Studio and AME for the ibm compatibles pc, priced at apr $9000. So once again, most power for your money when you use an Amiga or what was you waiting for ;) - The German company Bit Sommer & Dickmann announces the release of the SpeedMaster for the Amiga 4000. SpeedMaster is a frequence generator that increases the clock frequence of the Amiga 4000. More than 60% perfromance increase is promissed when sporting the Amiga 4000/040 in 41 MHZ. Contact Bit Sommer & Dickmann at: FAX Germany, 2131-944319 - Heinz Wrobel reports that a new version of it's wonderful post.library is in work. The new version becomes available as a DataType. Highlights of the post.library in the upcoming version are: - A "fix" for cvi and cvr which should help with some special Quark- XPress files. - heavy magic to make old FreeHand files work that violate documented PS Level 2 behaviour (meatball.ps - _transparent_ handling of DOS style EPS files with binary headers. - and more ;) - US base company MicroActive Inc announces the continuing support for it's Amiga products. MicroActive Inc mention it's stock market technical analysis and database management package for the Amiga, MicroTrader. Reports to be a sophisticated package, MicroTrader allows the user to perform own technical analysis on stocks, options, commodities and indices. It allows the user to keep his portfolio under constant supervision and spot buy formations in other securities. User can mind his own portfolio and update. either automatically using the powerful communication capability, or manualy using the advanced screen editor. - Digita International announces the continuing development on the WordWorth 3.1 for the Amiga. Tons of new features are promissed. A very welcome improvment is the promissed 40x speed increase!!! Look for a feature-list in a later AmyNews. - A new version 2.2 of the PhotoCD from the German based company Corporate Media is released now. The new version sports better prefs possibility to load pictures and a nicer GUI. - The standard mathematic program Maple V version 3.0 for the Amiga is under development. Maple V is expected to be completed this year. A Student Edition of Maple V, release 3, will be distributed by Brooks/Cole. The general release time is around December 94. - German based company MAXON Computer Gmbh announces the release of several new packages for the Amiga, among others, MAXON mentions, MAXONBasic, a new complete development package for the Amiga. MAXONBasic consists of an editor, compiler and debugger. Being compatible with HiSoftBasic and the good old AmigaBasic, the package allows the user to do professional programing using features as includes, functions and subroutines. Another package from MAXON; MAXONTools, a DirectoryOpus clone, is a highly configurable directory utility program that allows the user to use docks to perform the most used operations. - Awared winner professional CAD package for the Amiga, XCAD - 3000, will soon come in a new version (this info directly from one of the XCAD programmers). XCAD - 3000 in it's current version is up to 15 (yes 15) times faster than AutoCad on IBM PC platform. XCAD - 3000 was the winner of CADEX US 1993. XCAD 3000 3D is, among other places, used by "Rolls Royce", US GSM and "Lucas Aeroscope". Feature list for the current version: - True 3D database - Dynamic Views - rotate design in any axis - X, Y or Z - Instant prespective with user definable eye & vantage points - Real time rendering - Automatic hidden line removal - Unique command within command processing - User definable tablet & screen menus - User definable construction planes - Supported surfaces: planar, tabulated cylinders, surfaces of revolution - Printers: Preferences supported printers. HPGK pen plotters - more 16 milions of colors - Read formats: XCAD professional, XCAD designer, AutoCad DXF, Aegis Draw/Draw 2000 and more - Write formats: AutoCad DXF, Imagine object format, DPaint and more - The second patch to the leading DesktopPublishing software for the Amiga, PageStream 3.0, is out now. The patch v3.0b features 49 additions and bug fixes (many are very complex additions). A new patch version 3.0c is due to release soon. - The US company "Mr Hardware" announces the release of several new specialized database applications for SuperBase Professionl (from Oxxi). "Mr Hardware" has updated version for it's powerful "Video Scort" and "Freelance Scort" for SBase Pro. - US company TriMedia Inc. sells a driver for Calcomp paint tablets. Patches for major paint programs are available too. contact them at: TriMedia Inc. 60 East Hintz Road Wheeling, IL 60090 - The new version 2.0 of the powerfull MultiMedia authering program, HELM is under development. Jerrell Nickerson of the Eagle Tree Software mentions the following improvments so far for the version 2.0: - Updated text scrolls, text crawls, and path-based object animation. - A new property browser - Better text handling - A micro language for creating your own visual effects - Page scheduling - Remote communications - The ability to stream sounds and animations off the hard drive - And more ;-) - Jerrell Nickerson Eagle Tree Software announces that he has completed a version of the powerful authoring program Helm for CD32. It knows about CD audio, FMV, CDXL, nonvolatile memory, and the game controller. Also, it has a focus system for bumping around the objects on the screen with the controller. - Andreas M. Kirchwitz has upgraded Urban D. Mueller C-Shell to version 5.39. C-Shell is a powerful replacement for the AmigaDOS CLI. Summary of the new feature for this version: - New builtin variable "_timeout" (in microseconds) sets maximum response time for terminal to answer WINDOW STATUS REQUEST (for window bounds). Defaults to 1 (for local usage), must be set to higher value for remote connections. Only used, if window pointer is not available. - Removed command line length limitation (140 chars) for ARexx scripts that ends with ".rexx" but are started without the trailing ".rexx". - Removed command line length limitation (518 chars) for ARexx scripts and external shells (#! in first line), this was a limitation in AmigaOS' System() function. DOS scripts still have this limitation, because you cannot RunCommand() "execute". - Not only "*" and "?" but also "[" and "]" recognized as AmigaDOS pattern. (that means, to use "[" and "]" you must quote (") or escape (\) them!) - ... and much more workarounds for serious bugs in DateToStr() and Locale. - Fixed bug: making an assign to an executable and calling the executable by its assign crashed machine. - Fixed bug: builtin command "cp" sometimes used already freed memory for generating error messages (resulted in some strange error messages). - New flag for for command abbreviation ($_abbrev): 8, search DOS path-list if command wasn't found in Cshell's internal program hash list (see "rehash" command) - CTRL-D now shows matching files if current word is not a directory. (if directory then shows contents of directory -- as usual) In its current implementation this may have unexpected side effects if current word is already a pattern. - Class definition for AmigaE in class.sh - Now internal timer (eg, %e in the titlebar) not set to zero when a null command is encountered. (same for return code, %x in titlebar) - The idea of always using the variable "_dirformat" for "dir" wasn't a good idea. So, "_dirformat" is only used if option -z is given (when "_dirformat" is unset then use first argument as format string). - New control-code for line-editing: "^V" (ctrl-v) quotes next char. - New builtin variable "_kick" holds version number of Operating System. - Builtin command "assign" now prints volume name if assign points to an unmounted volume (eg, a removed floppy disk) and doesn't pop up a requester "Please replace volume ..." - It was a stupid idea to force redirecting of all Cshell-related system requesters to CSH's screen, because requester windows inherit the window title of their "initiator". They appear now again on your default public screen. - Fixed serious bug (crashed machine) with redirection and launching programs into background. (files closed twice) Known bug: it's still not possible to run pipes into background... - When running programs into background (run, rback, &), internal commands and aliases are recognized and executed with "csh -c". Aliases WON'T be resolved on this level so they must be declared in .cshrc to run them into background. - Execution of Rexx-Scripts (without trailing ".rexx") and any other program with "#! my_prog" or ";! my_prog" in first line of script now possible also from DOS search path and not only $_path. - New builtin variable "_mappath" (see manual), enables pathname- mapping for commands if script starts with "#!" or ";!" in first line. Converts Unix pathes like "/usr/..." to "usr:...". - New option "-w" for Cshell, don't use window pointer (useful for KingCON). - New option "-V" for Cshell, send only VT100 compatible control sequences. - Internal variable "o_vt100" now used (if option -t or -V is set), don't send control sequences that are not VT100 compatible (eg, special Amiga control sequences). - Various changes/enhancements to existing commands. - Miscellaneous bug fixes. - Merian Software & Design announces the release of "DATABASE PROFESSIONAL" version 2.0. "DATABASE PROFESSIONAL" is a full featured powerful database program a la SuperBase Pro. More about "DATABASE PROFESSIONAL" in a later issue of AmyNews. - The German company ProDad announces the development of the new video editing program CAVIN. It supports all kinds of hardware (Control-L, LANC, PANASONIC-EDIT, RS232 and RS 422 protocolls) and timecode (VITC, TCTC, RAPID). You can also use infrared signals for older hardware. CAVIN hast timelines for A & B VCR's, graphics / animation, hardware (i.e. framegrabber, M-JPEG boards, cd-player), audio (Amiga, audio boards or external). So you can use it as a complette A/B editing system. You can of course configure CAVIN to work in conjunction with other Pro Dad products, such as clariSSA, Monument Titler and Adorage. ProDad has also upgraded older products. Adorage 2.5 now supports a transparent colour 0, image conversion and loading of different image types (i.e. TIFF, PCX) and has some new 3D effects. There are two new modules for clariSSA, the Loaderpackage allows you to import new image formats (i.e. GIF, JPEG, PCX), while the "motion sound" add on allows you to add samples to your SSA animations. - A reminder due to missunderstanding about PageStream version 3.0 files formats; SoftLogic *WILL* release PageStream v3.0 developer materials for creating import/export/printer modules etc. - Helmut Hoffmann announces the release of EGS-TV Professional v3.1. EGS-TV Professional is a Desktop Video, harddisk sequence editing and framegrabber software now available even for EGS systems. EGS-TV offers high/true-color sequence editing and animation generation for random access sequences on your harddisk. It can apply amazing trick technics as the Blue Screen Keying to your pictures and sequences/animations. Did you ever want to edit an 80MByte animation and delete a frame out of the middle? No problem with EGS-TV. All this is done through a font sensitive EGS user interface which runs on your biggest screens in 24Bit color quality... EGS-TV can import and export pictures very fast to and from many other EGS programs. It can even run on the same screen as thoose programs. It offers many file formats (IFF, JPeg, YUV, PPM, QRT, Targa, DEEP etc) and uses it's own fast sequence format for random access sequences. - Kermit Woodall of the Nova Design, Inc. announces that a new version of CineMORPH is due to immediate release with ImageFX 2.0. - Gordon Wilkes of the WindShadow Software announces the release of the "learning about music" software for children, "Making Music with Bertie Bunny". - A new set of clipart collection for FinalWriter 2.1 are available now from SoftWood. - GoldEd, one of the most powerful and configurable ASCII text editor, version 1.0 is finaly out. - For those who asked me, here is the list of new improvments in bum7 for BlitzBasic II - Improvment and bugfixed and addition to this areas: Stability, Debugging, Interupts and BlitzKeys, Serial Stuff, GadTools, ScreensLib, ValLib, Display Library, Palette Library, Banks and Decoding. - And all new commands: GTStatus(GTList#,Id) ;bbgtlib GTArrowSize size ;bbgtlib DecodeILBM BitMap#,MemoryLocation ;ilbmifflib DecodeSound Sound#,MemoryLocation ;audiolib DecodePalette Palette#,MemoryLocation[,Palette Offset] ;palettelib DecodeMedModule MedModule#,MemoryLocation ;medlib DecodeShapes Shape#[,Shape#],MemoryLocation ;shapeslib InitShape Shape#,Width,Height,Depth ;shapeslib SetPeriod Sound#,Period ;audiolib ;audiolib Bank(Bank#) LoadBank Bank#,FileName$[,MemType] AllocMem (size,type) ;banklib FreeMem location,size ;banklib BlockScroll X1,Y1,Width,Height,X2,Y2[,BitMap#] ;scrolllib ClipBlitMode BPLCON0 ;2dlib CyclePalette Palette# ;palettelib FadePalette SrcPalette#,DestPalette#,Brightness.q ;palettelib InitPalette Palette#,NumColors ;palettelib PaletteRange Palette#,StartCol,EndCol,r0,g0,b0,r1,g1,b1 ;palettelib DuplicatePalette SrcPalette#,DestPalette# ;palettelib SavePalette Palette#,FileName$ ;iffmakelib CustomColors CopList#,CCOffset,YPos,Palette,startcol,numcols ;displaylib CustomString CopList#,CCOffset,YPos,Copper$ ;displaylib DisplayDblScan CopList#,Mode[,copoffset] ;displaylib DisplayRainbow CopList#,Register,Palette[,copoffset] ;displaylib DisplayRGB CopList#,Register,line,r,g,b[,copoffset] ;displaylib DisplayUser CopList#,Line,String[,Offset] ;displaylib DisplayScroll CopList#,&xpos.q(n),&xpos.q(n)[,Offset] ;displaylib ReadSerialMem Unit#,Address,Length ;seriallib WriteSerialMem Unit#,Address,Length ;seriallib PopInput & PopOutput ;inputoutputlib GameB(por#) ;gameiolib NumPars ;cliargslib Par$(parameter#) ;cliargslib FromCLI ;cliargslib ParPath$ (parameter,type) ;cliargslib And to all people asking for Acid Softwares Internet adress. Acid's Email address is acid@iconz.co.nz - The US company Blue-Knight Productions announces the availability of a new CD Rom disk containing NEVER RELEASED music composed by 10 of the best Amiga composer. More about this disk later. - Jolyon Ralph at Almathera reports that they have just finished evaluating a new filesystem for Amiga 4000 with CD-rom drives (SCSI-2 drives, eg Toshiba 4101, or the Tandem IDE CD-ROM drive) which offers CD32 emulation. The emulation is pretty good, it can run Video Creator and most CD32 games, supporting cd.device audio. - Mathias Kretschmer of the German company ProDev Vertrieb announces the release of the ProCrypt Version 1.0. ProCrypt is designed to encrypt the data on selected partitions on the fly. - Powerful GUI-builder program for the Amiga, VisualArts, is now available in a new version 2.0. VisualArts allows you to actually DRAW a user interface to your program. A summary of the main features; - Menu and List manager - Object Master - Insert custom codes into any GadTools or GadTool Menu items - Drawing tools such as rectangle, circle and lines - Supports AppWindow and MultiProcessing windows - Add AREXX to any program - Custom images, custom images for button, PopupMenu - Get any IFF color map and use it in your program - Color palette and over 40 custom patterns for fills - Context Sensitive - User perference - Automatic history and time interval saving - User configurable source output and many more features. - The first patch to PageStream 3.0 is out now. The patch v3.0a feature: - Frameless text objects implemented! Just click on the page with the Text tool and type! - Eliminated extra text redraws when applying attributes! - Current attribute defaults are now implemented. (You can now place the insertion point (cursor), change the font or other attributes, and then type, without reverting back to Triumvirate.) - You can now repeatedly use the arrow gadgets in the Edit palette to change the type size and other text attributes. - Changed default alignment from justified to left. - Amiga keyboard shortcuts now work. - You now get a normal height cursor when you click in a frame. - Right indent tab are now done. - Stopped text from being displayed outside of its frame. - New custom Epson driver included! - HP color variants now supported. - PaintJet problems fixed. - Some Canon variants are now supported. Choose the Epson driver from the Printing Preferences' Type popup, and choose the Canon model from the Model popup. (These Canon printers are similar to Epson printers.) - The basic 13 resident PostScript printer fonts are now supported for PostScript printing, but the style variations are not. (ie: Pala (Palatino) will print correctly, but Pala Italic will not; it will print as Palatino normal. This will be corrected in 3.0b. Times Italic, Times Bold, Times Bold Italic, and Triumvirate Bold (Helvetica) will print correctly though, because they are in a different font format.) - Printing Compugraphic fonts to PostScript now saves the generated PFB versions of the fonts on disk. This solves the timeout problem. See the NOTES section for important details. - Top offset problem fixed. (You may need to adjust your offsets.) - Improvd Floyd-Steinberg dithering. - TO color percentage fixed for PostScript. - Collate now defaults to off. - Do Not Print flag (Edit palette, Object/Edit) now implemented. - Parenthesis problem (PostScript) fixed. - Multiple copy problem (non-PostScript) fixed. - Toolbox Prefs: Pie and Arc are no longer reversed. - Toolbox Prefs: Opaque/Transparent is no longer ignored. - Font Prefreferencess: Cache settings are now loaded. - Autoscroll now works when resizing objects. - Intellifonts should now rotate/slant/twist correctly. - And more PageStream v3.0b will add features necessary for tutorial lessons and more. Stay tune! - Long awaited AWESOME program for the Amiga MovieGuide v3.0 is now out. Taking more than 5 mega byte of space on your HardDrive, MovieGuide is a multimedia aplication that contains information about 18000 movies and serious. News for version 3.0 are: - Topics added - Biographies added (some pictures here too) - Oscars added - Ratings added - Cleaner layout, setup-screen added __ - Mini-lexicon added / /\ - "Scan all" function added to browser __ / / / A - Faster title-search /_/\/ / / G - More titles, more plot descriptions \ \ \/ / I - A few pictures from movies added \ \ / M - A new intro added \_\/ A - Bugs in browser and plots fixed MovieGuide is a highly recommend program and doesn't cost more than $0. Amiga softwares Rule! - A new version of landscape generating software, SceneryAnimator, is in it's beta testing period :-) More about this wonderful new release in a later issue of AmyNews - Terra Nova Development announces the availability of Magic Lantern v2.0, the critically acclaimed 24 bit animation package for the Amiga. Magic Lantern version 2.0 allows users to create, edit and display delta compressed animations in up to 24 bit color on all the popular true color display cards for the Amiga, as well as all the native Amiga modes (including AGA). It will also play sound effects in either mono or stereo though the Amiga sound chip during animation play back. New features include virtual memory support; now animations can be as large as your hard disk, and Magic Lantern will still be able to edit and display them. Double Time compression technology can double animation speed and reduce animation sizes by half. Another new compression technology has been added that can speed up some animations (especially those in 16 and 24 bit) by up to 25%, and reduce animation sizes by up to 20%. Rebuilding animations has been optimized, and for large animations can be 75% faster. Direct support for the Retina Z3 has been added, resulting in animations that are up to 50% faster and 40% smaller for that card. Magic Lantern 2.0 still contains all the features of previous versions, including sound synchronization, enforcement of frame rates, full ARexx support, animation disassembly, palette changes and more. - Sound/Noise tracker compatible module player for the Amiga, the D.A.S. ModulePlayer version 3.4 will be out soon. The new version has, among other improvments, support for 6 more module formats including TFMX Pro, TFMX 7V and C64 SID modules. - Powerful spreadsheet for the Amiga, TurboCalc, will jump directly from version 2.1 to 3.0. Lots of improvments are promissed. The goal is to make it equal or better than microsoft excel. TurboCalc supports SYLK format and in it's current version it's much like Excel. If you are familiar with Excel then you are familiar with TurboCalc too. More about this superb product in a later issue of AmyNews ;-) - This is for those of you who use the powerful Blitz Basic II (ASIC SW); Blitz User Magazine issues 6-10 (£15) are now available from: Guildhall Leisure Services Blitz Subscriptions Unit 15 Guildhall Industrial Estate Kirksandall Doncaster DN3 1QR England - Pure Logic Software president Jason Freund announces that they are and will be loyal to the Amiga users. Pure Logic Software is developing a major upgrade to the "On The Ball" (a personal information manager for ther Amiga). The upgrade is to be released Nov/Dec 1994. - ADPTools Professional v1.0 is now out. It's a powerful FronEnd for the ADPro Professional (ASDG). - Oxxi Inc reports that development of Oxxis superb multimedia package VideoStage Pro continues. Oxxi estimates a release date Fall (1994) for VideoStage Pro Plus, VSP+. VideoStage Pro in it's current version is a powerful multimedia authoring program desined to compete with the industry standard multimedia package SCALA InfoChannel. VideoStage's impressive text animation capabilities also make it an amazing video titling tool when used with a genlock. There is built- in control for ECS chipset genlocks, GVP's G-Lock, and Digital Creations' SuperGen. - Silicon Prairie leading caching program for the Amiga, HyperCache Professional version 2.0 is now out. HyperCache Professional can speed up data access by as much as 3000% on devices such as: SCSI & IDE hard drives, CD-ROM drives and floppy drives. - A new version of the communication program NComm version 3.05 is now released. The new version corrects all known bugs and ads several new features. - UK based company Marpet Developments announces the release of, CD32 S-Port ($35 US). This hardware/software package Connects the CD32 to a 25 pin serial port via the keyboard port. - "Paint Engine" is the new generation Paint/Processing package for the Amiga. It is the fastest image processor for the Amiga and comes with tons of features. "Paint Engine" is in it's beta testing period. Beta testers claims that on Amiga 4000, "Paint Engine" does almost real- time image manipulation!!! Read more about it's outstanding features in a later issue of AmyNews. Cybernetica will distribute "Paint Engine". - Just a quick note; Barfly version 1.09 is the first Assembler/Debugger that currently supports the 68060. - Dice C devlopment package for the Amiga is available now in a new version 3.0. For upgrade information contact: Obvious Implementations Corporation P.O. Box 4487 Cary, NC 27519-4487 USA - HarmonySoft (Israel) announces the availability of the student's version of Rashumon v3.0 for only $60. The student's version doesn't include the printed user manual. Rashumon is a multi-lingual word-processor for the Amiga. It supports multiple fonts (including Agfa Intellifonts), 256 colors for graphic objects and 8 colors for text and tables. it has full Postscript and IFF support. One of the major features in release 3.0 is Rashumon's ability to output Scala Lingua script. Any document can be converted into Scala Lingua script format. The conversion includes: text (in any language), color, attributes, layout, line spacing, tab stops, IFF brushes. Structured drawings (made by Rashumon's Table Generator) aren't supported in Scala's current version but will be supported in next version. HarmonySoft sells fonts for many different languages. - MainActor v1.55 is out now. It's mainly a bug fixed version. - XEMrip.library for all XEM-compatible communication programs is due to immediate release. XEMrip.library gives your XEM-compatible terminal software like Term, XCOMM, Terminus etc to communicate with RIP based BBS system. - The long-awaited book "Connect Your Amiga!" by Dale L. Larson, published by IAM, Intangible Assets Manufacturing, ISBN 1-885876-02-5 is finished. Special discounts are available for early orders. "Connect Your Amiga!" is 256 pages packed with information for networking and for going online. From background information for the novice to networking hints and tips for advanced users, this book has something for every Amiga owner. - Long-awaited raytracing program, LightWave 3D version 4.0 is now under development. LightWave 3D v4.0 will be priced at $995.95. Owners of the current standalone version, LightWave 3.5 for the Amiga, will be able to upgrade to version 4.0 for $149.95. LightWave has been used on TV shows like seaQuest DSV, Babylon 5, Star Trek : The Next Generation, Robocop, Viper, Unsolved Mysteries, and Weird Science to produce the final special effects shown on air. Babylon 5 won an Emmy last year for it's LightWave produced graphics, and the Video Toaster also won an Emmy, due in part to its LightWave 3D system. LightWave 4.0 includes a number of new features, including inverse kinematics for character animation. There will also be a new plug in filter system that will allow users to add features like real world physics or advanced animation features. LightWave Modeler will also feature multiple undo and redo, and Metaform, which allows simple creation of organic and aerodynamic objects. - The new Wacom ArtZ (graphic tablet) is now out. Wacom sells drivers for the Amiga. A new minor update to TVPaint will support all features of the new Wacom ArtZ. - The new version of EGS-TV, the video editing software for EGS and VLab framegrabbers is out now :) EGS-TV is a superior product for all Amiga EGS system and works as a front-end for the V-Lab digitizer. Using EGS-TV powerful AREXX port you can i.ex. grab sequences with precise control and it sports a 'Blue-box' facility for integrating backgrounds behind your foreground subjects. For more information contact Helmut Hoffmann at: hhoff@pool.informatik.rwth-aachen.de - Manuel Lemos of Upper Design (Portugal, yes they develop high quality Amiga softwares even in Portugal) head programmer of one of the most powerful recovery softwares for the Amiga, "Upper Disk Tools" version 1.01 is working on objetcs that will improve your DTP/Word Peocesser software. Among long awaited objects, he mentions a very powerful "Equation Editors" and "Bibliography database". The estimated release date in Dec 1994. "Upper Disk Tools" is a very powerful Amiga program for recovering bad harddrives etc. It is the first Amiga program that uses the WorkBench (TM) mecanism for it's GUI. If you know how to use Workbench and icons you already know how to use "Upper Disk Tools". - Apex Software's Forge texture generation program for the Amiga is now avaiable to all multimedia creators. Forge is an awesome addition to any LightWave animator's digital toolchest. Forge is a texture rendering and animation program. Simply plug in the textures, change the settings and render previews until you're ready to render a final image. That final image is loaded into LightWave as an Image Map for use like any other. Simple enough, right? But Forge goes far beyond this basic need. - Pester CeV Design (US) is working on their low cost trapdoor to Zorro bus expansion system. Using it, you'd have the equivalent of an Amiga 4000 platform to build on for less than a grand invested. - Terra Nova Development of Ventura, California has released Volume One of its Designer Objects series of 3D models. This first volume, "DINER", is a three disk set of objects for Impulse, Inc.'s Imagine software for Amiga computers. The Diner set includes a variety of objects that together build a complete diner of the early 1950's, including a jukebox, counter, booths, a pay telephone, dishes, cups, silverware, and other items for place settings. In many cases there are both `hi-res' and `lo-res' versions versions of objects so that artists can optimize their scenes for either image quality or speedy rendering. In addition to the objects and image maps there are two Imagine projects on the disks. One, with scenes that can be rendered on five megabyte systems, offers fairly simple scenes; the other features more complex scenes that require up to fourteen megabytes to render. A manual is included. The Designer Objects series is intended to showcase the talents of gifted 3D artists by making available affordable collections of their 3D objects. The Diner objects were created by award-winning computer artist Bradley W. Schenck, whose work should be familiar to the Amiga community through articles and artworks including wins in the BADGE Killer Demo Contests of 1988 and 1989. Terra Nova Development P. O. Box 2202 Ventura California 93002 USA - Jim Drew of Utilities Unlimited International, inventer of the Amiga Emplant technology is announcing "The Edge" (Electronic Display Graphics Emulator), the next generation graphic board for any Zerro III Amigas. "The Edge" features: 64 bit wide Cirrus Alpine graphic processor interfaced to a Zorro III slot. It supports the Industry standard ARGB. "The Edge" is backwards compatible with any Cirrus 54xx series processor, meaning that you can use the EGS Spectrum or Picasso II software with it but "The Edge" will of course have it's own (fast) WB emulation/mode promotion software. It uses 72 pin SIMMs (up to 8 megs via two SIMMs), and will retail for ~$299 w/0k RAM. With video speed equal to the PowerMAC's PDS video board, it is fast. 640x480x32 bit animations in realtime by just moving the data to the board. Up to 80 megapixels per second, and the blitter can move entire offscreen bit maps into the viewing area without any glitches in the display. It's also very fasstttt. - DIAVOLO backup software for the Amiga version 1.7 is now out. It's by far the most user freindly and system freindly backup software for the Amiga. Media Disk is the new distributer of the DIAVOLO in the USA. - Interworks ethernet-based, Peer-to-peer Networking solution, Enlan-DFS new version 2.0 is now out - Several new PIMs for Image Master R/t are now availble from Karl Bellve at University of Maryland at Baltimore, Dept. Of Physiology They are mainly used for scientific image analysis. Email him at kbellve@umabnet.ab.umd.edu to obtaine the PIMs. They are free. - Version 4.2 of the Shuttle Tracking Program, SatTrack is out now. It allows you to track the position of the shuttle to see the laser flashes that it will be projecting on the earth during the mission. - I had a fresh FAX from the Blue Ribbons president concerning their continuing support of the Amiga products. Most important points in the fax are: "We are loyal to the Amiga platform. All our multiplatform softwares like our "Bars & Pipes professional" are constructed for the Amiga first. Then we port our softwares to other platforms. The multitasking nature of the Amiga, makes this computer number 1 source for the music and midi. We did a lot of improvments to the Track Window Menu, Edit Window, Song Construction Window, Metronome, printing, Tool and Accessories sections in the version 2.5 of the "Bars & Pipes professional" but the development continues and we are designing the next majour update to the "Bars&Pipes". The new version will amoung other things support the MacroSystems Toccato" - Ameristar ethernet cards are available again, through CEI US. - A student edition of Maple V for the Amiga is under development. Source, Bob Evans, the Director of Electronic Publishing at Brooks/Cole. - Custom Services is selling STU, The Amiga System Test Utiltiy. STU is a memory and disk diagnostic. It tests memory and disk drives to find problems. STU allows you to simultaneously test up to seven disk drives or partitions. Each drive is individually controlled. You may do destructive or non-destructive tests. Custom Services P. O. Box 254 Moorestown, NJ 08057 USA BBS: 609-953-8159 EMail: Tony-Preston@CUP.PORTAL.COM - Awared winner professional CAD package for the Amiga, XCAD - 3000, will soon come in a new version (this info directly from one of the XCAD programmers). XCAD - 3000 in it's current version is up to 15 (yes 15) times faster than AutoCad on IBM PC platform. XCAD - 3000 was the winner of CADEX US 1993. - Long awaited TurboText TT version 2.0 is under development. This info directly from TT's auther. TT v2.0 will be a majour update with lot of of new features. - Digital Soundtrack (Visual Inspiration) let you add samples sound, Midi songs and ST mode to your videos. Features include a preview mode, jog and shuttle controlls, and PIP picture-in-picture support for majour video boards. Digital Soundtrack supports various single- frame controllers like AmiLink and PAR (Personal Animation Recorder). - Genie Tools, vol 1 (Shead Data Processing) collection for Aladdin 4-D offers a variety of tools including the TriSub and DoBeSphere functions which let you create triangle-based spheres and the LissaCurve control. - Migraph MS2400 Color Scanner (SCSI connection) + state of the art OCR software are now out. The package will turn the Amiga into a 2400 DPI, 24 bit color scanning workhorse. Info Migraph - Microdeal is selling Clarity 16-bit sound sampler. The software supports the standard Amiga sound file formats including the one-, three-and five- octave 8SVX/IFF. The 8SVX/IFF file format is limited to eight bits. Clarity also supports the AIFF file format for 16-bit samples and the proprietary AVR file format. AVR, or Audio Visual Research, is the developer of Clarity. AVR files store complete 16-bit stereo data, including locations for as many as six blocks, in the sample and the samples windowing data. There is also a sample sequencer with a capacity of up to 300 events. The sequencer provides fine control of the automated playback of samples. Sequencer files can be created, edited, saved and loaded. Clarity's MIDI mode lets you play samples via the Amiga's keyboard or via a MIDI instrument. The Amiga's keyboard supports up to 10 samples which can be adjusted over a nine-note range. The MIDI instrument supports a seven-octave range. Different samples can be assigned to different ranges of the MIDI instrument. The sample assignments are stored in MIDI Keyboard Map files which can be created, edited, loaded and saved. Clarity can also download and uploadith it but "The Edge" will of course have it's own (fast) WB emulation/mode promotion software. It uses 72 pin SIMMs (up to 8 megs via two SIMMs), and will retail for ~$299 w/0k RAM. With video speed equal to the PowerMAC's PDS video board, it is fast. 640x480x32 bit animations in realtime by just moving the data to the board. Up to 80 megapixels per second, and the blitter can move entire offscreen bit maps into the viewing area without any glitches in the display. It's also very fasstttt. - DIAVOLO backup software for the Amiga version 1.7 is now out. It's by far the most user freindly and system freindly backup software for the Amiga. Media Disk is the new distributer of the DIAVOLO in the USA. - Interworks ethernet-based, Peer-to-peer Networking solution, Enlan-DFS new version 2.0 is now out - Several new PIMs for Image Master R/t are now availble from Karl Bellve at University of Maryland at Baltimore, Dept. Of Physiology They are mainly used for scientific image analysis. Email him at kbellve@umabnet.ab.umd.edu to obtaine the PIMs. They are free. - Version 4.2 of the Shuttle Tracking Program, SatTrack is out now. It allows you to track the position of the shuttle to see the laser flashes that it will be projecting on the earth during the mission. - I had a fresh FAX from the Blue Ribbons president concerning their continuing support of the Amiga products. Most important points in the fax are: "We are loyal to the Amiga platform. All our multiplatform softwares like our "Bars & Pipes professional" are constructed for the Amiga first. Then we port our softwares to other platforms. The multitasking nature of the Amiga, makes this computer number 1 source for the music and midi. We did a lot of improvments to the Track Window Menu, Edit Window, Song Construction Window, Metronome, printing, Tool and Accessories sections in the version 2.5 of the "Bars & Pipes professional" but the development continues and we are designing the next majour update to the "Bars&Pipes". The new version will amoung other things support the MacroSystems Toccato" - Ameristar ethernet cards are available again, through CEI US. - A student edition of Maple V for the Amiga is under development. Source, Bob Evans, the Director of Electronic Publishing at Brooks/Cole. - Custom Services is selling STU, The Amiga System Test Utiltiy. STU is a memory and disk diagnostic. It tests memory and disk drives to find problems. STU allows you to simultaneously test up to seven disk drives or partitions. Each drive is individually controlled. You may do destructive or non-destructive tests. Custom Services P. O. Box 254 Moorestown, NJ 08057 USA BBS: 609-953-8159 EMail: Tony-Preston@CUP.PORTAL.COM - Awared winner professional CAD package for the Amiga, XCAD - 3000, will soon come in a new version (this info directly from one of the XCAD programmers). XCAD - 3000 in it's current version is up to 15 (yes 15) times faster than AutoCad on IBM PC platform. XCAD - 3000 was the winner of CADEX US 1993. - Long awaited TurboText TT version 2.0 is under development. This info directly from TT's auther. TT v2.0 will be a majour update with lot of of new features. - Digital Soundtrack (Visual Inspiration) let you add samples sound, Midi songs and ST mode to your videos. Features include a preview mode, jog and shuttle controlls, and PIP picture-in-picture support for majour video boards. Digital Soundtrack supports various single- frame controllers like AmiLink and PAR (Personal Animation Recorder). - Genie Tools, vol 1 (Shead Data Processing) collection for Aladdin 4-D offers a variety of tools including the TriSub and DoBeSphere functions which let you create triangle-based spheres and the LissaCurve control. - Migraph MS2400 Color Scanner (SCSI connection) + state of the art OCR software are now out. The package will turn the Amiga into a 2400 DPI, 24 bit color scanning workhorse. Info Migraph - Microdeal is selling Clarity 16-bit sound sampler. The software supports the standard Amiga sound file formats including the one-, three-and five- octave 8SVX/IFF. The 8SVX/IFF file format is limited to eight bits. Clarity also supports the AIFF file format for 16-bit samples and the proprietary AVR file format. AVR, or Audio Visual Research, is the developer of Clarity. AVR files store complete 16-bit stereo data, including locations for as many as six blocks, in the sample and the samples windowing data. There is also a sample sequencer with a capacity of up to 300 events. The sequencer provides fine control of the automated playback of samples. Sequencer files can be created, edited, saved and loaded. Clarity's MIDI mode lets you play samples via the Amiga's keyboard or via a MIDI instrument. The Amiga's keyboard supports up to 10 samples which can be adjusted over a nine-note range. The MIDI instrument supports a seven-octave range. Different samples can be assigned to different ranges of the MIDI instrument. The sample assignments are stored in MIDI Keyboard Map files which can be created, edited, loaded and saved. Clarity can also download and upload samples to and from a sampling instrument. - TurboCalc version 2.1 is released now. - Awared winner Amiga dissassembler RESOURCE version 6.0 is released now. - Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing, an application that would teach basic keyboard skills is now released. - A new improved version of ADPRO 24bit printer driver for the Primera color printers can be obtained directly from your Primera dealer or any dealer supporting ASDG products. - Blitz Basic II version 1.9 and Bum 7 are out now. - A wave of new softwares for the awared winner Amiga 3D software LightWave is here. Amoung others are "Newton's Law" - Cybernetica, PowerMacros - Cine Graphics and version 2.1 of Sparks - MetroGrafx. - Long awaited upgrade to ProDraw (GoldDisk) is now here. Version 3.03 fixes all known and unknown bugs under later OS version - PageStream 3.0 is now shipping ;) Japp! Best DTP program ever - SOFT-LOGIK gives now 3 kind of user support for it's products, more about them later in another message. - ProVector 3.0, from Stylus, Inc. in Colorado, in under beta testing. Among tons of new feature, it will export Adobe Illustrator (all versions). Stylus has worked close with SOFT-LOGIK to make the all new ProVector a good completation for PageStream 3.0 - SAS C release 6.55 is due to be released during the early 1995. - Brilliance 2.1 is under development - Utilities Unlimited is working on it's 68060 50 MHZ board. They are working on a multiCPU board for Zorro Amigas. The board can hold multiple numbers of CPU (up to 4 * 68060, now beat that!) RAM access is done in a 64 bit interleaved. This may change to 128. Burst is permanently on. - Real3D v3.0 is under development. There are more news but this was all for this time. Have fun with your wonderful Amiga and see you in the next issue. _ _ // AMIGA, Amiga Technologies International. \X/ Powered by Motorola.