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From: Dalibor.Kezele@bonus.fido.hr (Dalibor Kezele)
Subject: Letter To AR

Dear Jason and AmigaReport,

Just finished reading AmigaReport 3.02.  I'm happy when somebody is doing
something for Amiga instead of talking about it.  Amiga is on the critical
point of the life and we all have to anything we can to keep it alive. 
AmigaReport zine does a great job here.  I'm reading it from the 1st issue
I saw, think that was 2.23 which was released on the end of July.

The design you changed a couple of issue back is great but I still didn't
use to it.  Also, in last issue you again have the same old mistake with
empty spaces on the right border which causes horizontal scrooling of
nothing (I have WB open on 640*256).  Everything else is just fine,
expecially I like announcements included from CSAA conference on Usenet and
top 100 list of modules that you put into last issue.  Hope you'd include
it into AR in the future.  I'm also wondering what happened to CAUG.

Here in Croatia we also do a zine in AmigaGuide format.  It's called GUIDA
and it's on Croatian language.  We're trying to support mostly Amiga, then
other things like Informatics and scene happenings.  Guida doesn't have so
big amount of readers like AR, but we try to keep things together.

These days when we need real news instead of just rumours, AR comes in the
right time.  Don't quit it!

Dalibor Kezele (dalibor.kezele@120.hrfido.fesb.hr)

PS.  "ST" humour sections in the issue 2.24 wasn't understandable for those
who aren't Star Trek fans.  Hopefully, I'm one of them!

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From: Osma Ahvenlampi <Osma.Ahvenlampi@hut.fi>
Subject: Re: Pipe recursion

Martin Steigerwald <steigerw@stud.uni-frankfurt.de> wrote in Amiga Report 3.02:

>Requirements are: A working pipe command in command path!  Maybe you also
>need OS2.0 or above....

Actually, that's UNWORKING pipe command...

>Then all what you have to do is type:  pipe |
>When memory is eaten up, cancel all those requesters that may come up and
>after all that, when your amiga is still alive type:  dir

>My question to all: WHY THIS DOES HAPPEN?????  Does this happen with every
>pipe command or only with the one I use???  (If you could not reproduce
>this, I will tell ya want pipe command I use...)

It happens with the "original" Pipe command by Andy Finkel, found in (for
example) finkelshelltools.lha on Aminet. It's a bug in the otherwise quite
nice program.

And, it's a reason why I wrote a replacement. util/shell/Pipe-1.5.lha,
found on Aminet, does not have this behaviour, and, as an extra bonus, it
works with AmigaShell scripts also. Requires OS 2.04, but then again, the
Shell it is written for did not exist before that. Tested on OS 3.1 by me,
and by an unknown number of people on unknown version versions of OS.. All
reported bugs fixed, so it's pretty safe. ;)

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From: David Anyadike <umanyadi@cc.UManitoba.CA>
Subject: Reader Mail: UnpackAR

   I've been using a simple script file for the last year to automatically
unpack and display the latest Amiga Report after I download it, and I
wanted to share it here.

   I'm on the Amiga Report Internet mailing list, and get the latest Amiga
report mailed to me.  When it arrives in my mail box, I save it to my
personal file area at the university as, for example, AR302.  I then zip
it, and download it to my computer.  After I download it, I run the
following script (I call it UnpackAR) on my Amiga and continue to fiddle
online while my 68000 eventually unpacks Amiga Report and displays it
automatically.  When I finish online, the script already has AR
displayed... 

;----Start of Script----

.KEY ARname 
.DEF ARname "a"
makedir vd0:AR
cd vd0:AR
unzip DH1:<ARname>
uuxt x #?
delete dh1:ar#?.guide#? dh1:Install-AReport#?
lha x #? dh1:
cd dh1:
delete vd0:AR all
pat "run amigaguide" ar#?.guide

;----End of Script----

You'll notice an extensive use of wildcards.  By the use of wildcards and
it's own work directory in vd0:, it allows more flexibility.  This means
that you can give the UUencoded file ANY name, and when you zip it the zip
archive can be given any name as well (as long as you put the archive name
as the argument for the script).  Using whatever your favorite name for the
archive happens to be, adjust the '.DEF ARname' default parameter so that
no arguments are necessary (A.zip works for me). 

Just note the script requires unzip, or any unzipper.
                              uuxt, or any UUdecoder that accepts wildcards.
                              amigaguide.
                              lha, or un-lha-er that supports wildcards.
                              VD0:, the recoverable ram disk (if you don't
                                 have it, use RAM: instead)
                              DH1:, like on my harddrive (Any valid device
                                 with enough space can be used)
                              pat, the pattern matching script that
                                 Commodore included in your S: directory.

  Now I know that some people can't use the script above 'as is', so here's
some notes to make customizing it easier:

.KEY ARname             ;Gets the archive name as a command line argument
.DEF ARname "a"         ;Uses A.ZIP as the default filename, if none given
makedir vd0:AR
cd vd0:AR
unzip DH1:<ARname>      ;Replace unzip with your unzipper
uuxt x #?               ;Replace uuxt with your UUdecoder that allows wildcards
delete dh1:ar#?.guide#? dh1:Install-AReport#?
lha x #? dh1:
cd dh1:                 ;Note the DH1: references in the last 4 lines - 
delete vd0:AR all       ;       replace them if necessary
pat "run amigaguide" DH1:ar#?.guide
                        ;Make sure you have pat in your S: directory

The script and it's usage is very simple, and I hope I haven't made it seem
complicated.  I think it saves me a lot of typing, and speeds up the
process by automating it.  I used the protect command, as follows:

protect UnpackAR +s

so I can run the script just by typing "UnpackAR".  E-mail me if you find
this script useful, or if you have problems.