Archive Magazine 1996/ARCHIVE_96.iso/text/hints/volume_08/issue_09

Text File | 1995-05-09 | 13KB | 263 lines

Hints and Tips
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Canon BJ200 + CC TurboDriver Ö Iáhave had a number of problems with this
combination, and thought my solutions may help others.
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The first problem concerned the output of IBM ProPrinter strings. These
occur because the BJ-200 printer definition file supplied is an IBM
definition file, and should therefore be labelled as BJ10 since IBM
strings cannot be used in BJ200 mode. The converse also applies, i.e.
BJ-10 mode cannot handle Epson strings. I then used an Epson printer
definition file from the Acorn supplied discs, and all the problems
disappeared.
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The second problem concerned printing from Basic. I have written a WIMP
application which writes out a series of results for the bridge club of
which I am a member. I need to write direct from Basic so that I can
alter the print style and line and row spacing to produce the best
layout, using the comprehensive spacing and styles provided in BJ200
mode. It makes no sense to write these strings to the screen so I use
*FX3,10 to start the printed output and *FX3,0 to stop it. Everything
prints perfectly, but a drawfile will not print afterwards. I eventually
discovered that the *FX3,10 caused a Turboqueue file to be created, but
the *FX3,0 command leaves the file open and thus hangs the printing
process. I finally received a letter from CC today and I quote:-
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öRegarding the Basic printing Éproblemæ. The operating system itself
will not close the printout file after a *FX3,0. Indeed, we have
reported this as a bug to Acorn. However, if you immediately follow the
*FX3,0 command with a VDU3, then the file will close correctly.ò
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I have tried it and it works!
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John Wallace, Crawley
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CD-ROMs Ö With the advent of magazine CD-ROMs, which usually come in a
soft plastic sleeve, the safe storage of these can be made using a 5╝ö
disc box.
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Ted Lacey, Southampton
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Cursor movements in Publisher Ö There have been moans about one aspect
of Impression Publisher in various Acorn magazines: <shift-cursor> no
longer moves the cursor by one word, but is used for selecting text.
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In the latest version (1.05) of Publisher, the Preferences dialogue box
contains the option öShift Cursor Word Moveò, so you can take your pick.
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Jochen Konietzko, K÷ln, Germany
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Debugging via the serial port Ö Why has no-one extolled the virtues of a
second machine connected via the serial port? Even on the old BBC B,
this can be very useful. A trivial Basic program on the second machine
will print out the incoming data stream. Debugging time can then be cut
by such simple things as
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os_cli(echo Start of initialise() {serial: });
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in a C file. Clearly this is rather basic; a variadic function like
printf() is much more flexible, but the general usefulness, especially
when working on desktop applications, is considerable. Besides, there
must be lots of old machines around gathering dust. I use an old mono
Kaga monitor Iæve had since soon after the BBC first came out, and an
old 310 with no disc drive.
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John West, Surrey
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Deskjet 540 problems Ö I recently bought an HP DeskJet 540, the
replacement for the DJ520 and then spent a frustrating weekend trying to
get it to work with my A5000. I got beautiful printouts but it took half
an hour to print an A4 page. I tried the latest Acorn DeskJet driver
sent to me by Gerald Fitton, but it was no better than previous
versions.
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As soon as Monday came, I phoned Acorn and they had just heard from
their Australian office that other people had similar problems. Since
the DeskJet 540 is software controlled and the Centronics protocol has
been slightly modified, the 540 and A5000 were incompatible.
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The earlier Deskjet 520 was perfectly suitable to work with the A5000
but it was now officially off the market. Fortunately, the shop where I
purchased the 540 gave me a full refund when I explained the dilemma,
and I knew that I had seen a 520 recently in another store. I was lucky
and purchased the last one in stock Ö its monochrome resolution 600 by
300 is the same as the 540 but it does not have the colour upgradability
of the 540.
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Acorn say that the 540 should work satisfactorily with the Risc PC but
not with earlier computers, due to hardware differences in the
controller.
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(I gather that, after further investigation, it seems that the problem
is only with certain A5000s, not with all of them. Ed.)
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Michael Nurse, Cambridge
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Gang Screen in RISC OS 3.5 Ö With reference to Hints & Tips (Archive
8.7), the list of names can be initiated by four clicks of the menu
button over any part of ⌐ Acorn Computers Ltd, 1994, although it
sometimes refuses to work again until after a reboot.
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M R Buckland, Daventry
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Impression printing Ö Now, I know you all know this, but... for months,
I have been cursing the fact that, with Acornæs new printer drivers and
LaserDirect, printing one file too soon after another causes a önot
enough memory to printò error and you have to wait and try again. Well,
I discovered today that if you grab several files together and drop them
on the printer driver icon, they print off, one after the other, without
so much as a hesitation. I wish someone had told me before!!!!!!!
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Ed.
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More uses for the serial port Ö One of the pieces of software built into
the A-Link is the terminal software which could be used to receive the
debugging data, described by John West above, on a Pocket Book.
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I find this combination useful for another task as well. There are at
least two PD applications which allow you to set up a task window (as
you get from ctrl-f12) which takes input from, and outputs to, the
serial port, which means I can run command line utilities without taking
up desktop space, and even if someone else is using the computer for
other tasks.
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Matthew Hunter, NCS
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Printing from text editors Ö Contrary to Matthewæs comments (Archive 8.8
pp28/29), in my experience, Edit does print in response to <print> but
Zap does not. Dragging the file-save icon to the printer icon does work
with both packages. I will stick well clear of <shift-print>, however.
Zap prints a black (NOT blank) page!
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There remains one problem, however, which is common to Edit and Zap. If
the document contains a line of text which is too long to fit on one
line, it is truncated! This did not happen before I upgraded to RISC OS
3 Laser Direct and Printers 1.22. Previously, Edit inserted a CR/LF to
print the rest of the line (I did not have Zap then).
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Colin Singleton, Sheffield
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Risc PC Apps directory Ö As Keith Hodge has pointed out in his excellent
Risc PC column, the correct place to add applications into ÉAppsæ on the
iconbar is in !Boot.Choices.Boot.PreDeskTop, by adding lines such as:
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AddApp adfs::HardDisc4.$.Utilities.!ArcFS
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You may have noticed that the first line of this section reads:
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AddApp Boot:^.Apps.!*
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which displays any application, i.e. a directory whose filename begins
with a É!æ. This means that any normal directory whose filename does not
begin with a É!æ will not be displayed inside Apps on the iconbar. So,
if there are any applications there which you never use, you could place
them in a directory (called ÉNot Neededæ say) and they will not be
displayed, although they are still accessible through Apps on the hard
disc.
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The converse of this is that lines such as that given above for adding
applications into Apps need not, in fact, be placed in the file
PreDesktop Ö they can be anywhere. Therefore, you can have a small Obey
file which adds a selection of your favourite applications at any time.
This saves cluttering up the Apps directory display with everything you
might conceivably need until you actually need it, and it saves on
memory and time taken to Boot the machine, as the !boot files of your
chosen applications are not run, and their sprites are not loaded, until
you choose to add them to Apps by using your Obey file.
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Matthew Hunter, NCS
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Risc PC audio expansion Ö The audio header required by the audio mixer
for the Cumana Indigo CD-ROM drive, and the identical Acorn and ESP 16-
bit sound upgrades, is link 14 which was not fitted on some early
machines. The link is located at the top right corner of the motherboard
if you are looking at the machine from the front. It is a row of five
pins, with links connecting 1-2 and 2-4. Pin one is closest to the back
of the machine. If this link is not fitted, get in contact with Granada
who will replace your motherboard for one fitted with the correct
connector. Currently, the Cumana and 16-bit upgrades are mutually
exclusive, but ESP are working on an audio mixer to enable the 16-bit
sound and CD sound from any CD-ROM drive to be combined.
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Matthew Hunter NCS
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Risc PC font size Ö There was a request in Archive 8.8 p38 regarding the
font size for the outline font used in place of the system font. Full
details are given on pages 220 and 221 of Volume 5 of the RISC OS 3
PRMæs, but the following example Obey file will demonstrate the method.
It should be placed in the PreDesk directory of the !Boot sequence.
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configure wimpfont 0
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set wimp$font Trinity.Medium.Italic
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set wimp$fontsize 192
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set wimp$fontwidth 160
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The last two lines allow you to alter the height and width of the font,
as desired.
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It will only have an effect on text which an application regards as
system text Ö an application which uses its own fonts in icons will not
be affected.
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David Springle, Cheshire
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Window behaviour Ö I found that, when two windows containing a word
processor are open, it is possible to scroll one window and
simultaneously type into the other window. Further investigation has
shown that it is possible to do this with Zap (v.á1.20), Edit (v. 1.50),
Desk Edit (v. 3.00) and Publisher (v. 4.01). These are the only Éword
processorsæ (for want of a better collective name) Iáhave access to. It
is also possible to mix the WPs in the windows, e.g. the scrolling
window could contain a Publisher document and the typing window could
contain a Zap page. This only breaks down with Edit as the scrolling
window. When the Edit window is scrolled, this becomes the active window
and typing is not possible in the other window. (Why? Can it be
changed?).
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Dave Livsey, Devon
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Window behaviour II Ö Usually, if you have clicked on a window titlebar
(using select), to move it, or bring it to the front of the window
stack, processing will continue in the background Ö this can be seen by
having !Alarm counting seconds on the iconbar. If the window you are
using has a pane attached, however, you will find that the processing
stops. This is because clicking on the titlebar brings the window to the
front of the window stack, and the application then brings the pane to
the front. The window holding the pane is then no longer at the front,
and the WIMP tries to bring it to the front again, and so on. Using
<adjust> does not have the same effect, since it does not try to alter
the order of the windows.
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Matthew Hunter, NCS
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Hints & Tips
8.9
Exporting text Ö When exporting text from HolyBible into Impression, I
suggest that you use an intermediate Étemplateæ document. There are two
reasons for this. First of all, you may not like the style definitions
that ExpLAN have provided. So, in this dummy document, you can edit the
definitions to taste. Then, as you export the DDF text into that
document, it will take on your own style definitions. The second reason
is that when you export some DDF text, it brings with it thirteen style
definitions. When I want to quote a single verse in the God-slot, I
donæt want the Archive magazine style-sheet clogged up with all of those
styles, so I drop the DDF text into the dummy document. I then mark the
text <ctrl-A>, copy it and paste it into the God-slot. That way, it only
brings with it the styles it actually uses.
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HolyBible problem Ö Has HolyBible hung up on you? It has stiffed my
machine twice now and both times it occurred when I was marking some
text ready for export. Now I know that this isnæt a statistically
significant sample(!) but I wonder if anyone else has had similar
problems? I was working on a 10Mb RiscáPC and (I think) the only other
applications I had running at the time were Impression, Edit and
Keystroke. If you get hang-ups too, please report them to Gabriel,
giving as much detail as possible: what machine? memory configuration?
other applications running? what you were doing at the time? etc.
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Paul Beverley, NCSáu
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