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Archive Magazine 1996
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1995-06-25
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How is Medusa now?
7.10
All that I have seen about the Medusa project (i.e. the RiscáPC) has
convinced me that Acorn have fundamentally changed their ways of doing
things. They have certainly changed from the Éclosed boxæ computer
philosophy, they have become much more open with the media (especially
the Acorn press) and they have gone some way to breaking their
reputation for over-pricing.
7.10
The only major question mark for me is whether they have broken their
habit of launching a new computer but then not having any machines to
sell. The feeling I get is that they have done better than with the
A5000 although there is still a certain amount of patience needed! There
is a (small but) steady flow of machines Ö we are getting a few each
week so that our back-order list is actually shrinking, albeit not as
fast as we would like. (Unfortunately, we are getting rather more ACB15
and 25 models than ACB45s Ö which the majority of Archive subscribers
actually want.)
7.10
Come on, Acorn. Weære on your side. If thereæs some problem with ACB45s,
tell us and Iæm sure youæll find us very understanding. Not knowing what
is going on, and why, is very frustrating for those who have been
waiting (fairly) patiently for up to two months.
7.10
Products Available
7.10
Å A5000 is no more Ö Acorn have officially stated that the A5000 is no
longer in production and that they have no stocks left. We have one left
(2Mb/210Mb 33MHz) without monitor for ú990.
7.10
Å Acorn mice galore Ö We have now managed to buy a total of 250 Acorn
mice at special prices and, öwhile stocks lastò they are available to
Archive subscribers at ú20 each (normal price ú40). This makes them
cheaper than Claresæ mice at ú30 which arenæt as reliable as the
Logitech Acorn mice. Also, since replacement mouse cables are ú11
(Digitech) and ú13 (Logitech) it makes it hardly worthwhile re-tailing
mice!
7.10
Å Around the World in 80 Days is designed for upper primary school
pupils and will introduce them to a range of geographical skills
including grid references, longitude and time zones, latitude, contours,
bearings etc, all presented within an adventure as wicked Wiley Windbag
tries to thwart the efforts of the global travellers Freddie and Francis
Fogg (Phileas Foggæs children?). Around the World in 80 Days costs
ú39.95 +VAT from Sherston software or ú44 through Archive.
7.10
Å CDFS-FSCSI upgrade Ö If you upgrade your Acorn SCSI card to CDFS 2.2
by buying the Acorn upgrade, you also now get a copy of PhotoView. This
is an application that allows Kodak PhotoCDs to be viewed and used as a
resource in other applications. The price has risen slightly to reflect
the provision of the new software. It now costs ú41 inclusive through
Archive.
7.10
Å Graphics Loaders Ö With the greater range of graphics available to
the Acorn machines in different formats, Computer Concepts have released
a disc of graphics loaders. These cover PhotoCD, JPEG, Clear and an
enhanced TIFF loader. The Graphics Loaders disc costs ú39 +VAT from
Computer Concepts or ú43 through Archive.
7.10
Å Impression Publisher Ö This is now shipping from Computer Concepts
although there is quite a backlog of orders. This new version of
Impression provides a range of new features with the professional user
in mind. Irregular shaped frames will be useful to many users and the
range of controls for colour work will be particularly welcome and
reinforce its position as the leading DTP package for Acorn machines. We
hope to have a review shortly which will give details of the new
facilities. Impression Publisher costs ú169 +VAT or ú180 through
Archive.
7.10
Å James Pond2+ Ö James Pond 2 has had almost 500 new screens and new
tunes added to become James Pond 2+ ! You can upgrade from Gamesware for
ú7.99 if you send them proof of purchase. The normal retail price
remains at ú25.99 or ú24 through Archive.
7.10
Å Keystroke version 3 Ö This new version offers much more compatibility
with CCæs products, provides a slow demonstration mode and önumerous
extras that have been added at customersæ requestò. Also, it is fully
RiscáPC-compatible. The upgrade costs ú4.95 inclusive from Quantum
Software.
7.10
Å Logix is a suite of applications from Silicon Vision, allowing
students to design and simulate logic circuits. Features include
multiple tailored libraries, fully hierarchical operation, custom design
of circuits and casings, built-in LEDs and displays for feedback,
switches and push buttons for logic input, drawfile saving of circuits
and simulations. Logix costs ú99.95 +VAT (or ú109 through Archive) and a
site licence for twenty machines is ú300 +VAT from Silicon Vision.
7.10
Å Magnetoids Ö Oregan Developmentsæ latest game is a 3D space battle
game. It features variable light sourced vector graphics, Acorn and RTFM
joystick support, enhanced ARM 3 mode and hard disc installation.
Magnetoids costs ú24.95 from Oregan Developments or ú23 through Archive.
7.10
Å Morley SCSI upgrade Ö There is now an upgrade for the Morley 16-bit
SCSI cards to make it compatible with RiscáPC and also to provide the
latest CDFS and a PhotoCD viewing application. The other improvement is
in the formatting / partitioning / installation software which is now
easier to use and has password protection to prevent unauthorised
formatting or alteration of the SCSI configuration. The upgrade is only
available from Morley Electronics and costs ú35 inclusive.
7.10
Å Ovation price drop and special offer Ö There is no sign yet of an
Ovation 2 but Ovation 1 is being given a sales boost. The price has been
dropped to ú69 +p&p +VAT (ú67 through Archive) and if you buy it before
the end of August, you will get free copies of Desktop Thesaurus and a
book called öGetting into Ovationò.
7.10
Å Photo-retouch software Ö This month sees the release of two more
photo-retouch packages for the Acorn machines. They are PhotoTouch at
ú79.95 inclusive from Oregan or ú75 through Archive and Digital Artsæ
Picture at ú99 +VAT or ú108 through Archive. We hope soon to have
comparative reviews of these two packages with Photodesk from Spacetech,
which costs ú185 through Archive.
7.10
Å ProArtisan 2 CD Ö Clares have updated ProArtisan so that it will
handle PhotoCD images and have made the whole thing available on a CD
for ú169.95 or ú158 through Archive. You can upgrade from ProArtisan 2
direct from Clares Micros for ú29.95 inclusive.
7.10
Å Professional full colour scanning service Ö T-J Reproductions, who
provide a full Acorn disc-to-print bureau facility, now have full colour
drum scanning facilities. Existing users of T-Jæs imagesetting and litho
printing services can take advantage of this complimentary service of
scanning images at up to 5,000 dpi in four colour format Ö presumably
using SyQuest removable hard discs to transfer the massive files
produced!
7.10
Å Psion3a Ö We are now stocking the Psion3a Personal Organisers. The
256Kb version is ú269 and the 512Kb version is ú329.
7.10
Å Rephorm update Ö Oak Solutions have updated Rephorm for the RiscáPC,
providing support for 15-bit and 24-bit sprites. They have also
introduced a number of other improvements including OLE support, Clear
file conversion and swap start and end frames. The price remains at ú50
+VAT from Oak Solutions or ú55 through Archive and an upgrade path is
available Ö just send your master disc plus ú15 +VAT to Oak Solutions
for the latest version.
7.10
Å Repro Ö Oak Solutionsæ printer driver control utility was described
last month on page 7 but, unfortunately, we forgot to mention the price!
It costs ú50 +VAT from Oak Solutions or ú55 through Archive.
7.10
Å RISCáOS 3 Style Guide Ö This is now available from stock through
Archive for ú10 inclusive.
7.10
Å RiscáPC with no monitor Ö Acorn have announced a öno-monitorò option
for the RiscáPC. If we supply a monitor-less computer to an
öenthusiastò, Acorn will allow us to supply it at ú250 +VAT off the
normal price. So if you want to order a RiscáPC without a monitor, just
deduct ú294 off the basic price. This offer only applies to individual
Acorn öenthusiastsò (but you donæt have to wear an anorak to prove it)
and not to schools, colleges or businesses, presumably. (Mind you, we
havenæt yet had the official conditions of this offer from Acorn yet.)
7.10
Å RiscáPC VRAM price drop Ö We have managed to reduce the RiscáPC VRAM
prices: 1Mb is now ú130, 2Mb is ú200 but the 1Ö2Mb upgrade is still
ú110.
7.10
Å RiscáPC SIMM price drop Ö With increasing volume of sales, we have
been able to get better pricing for the RiscáPC SIMM memory as follows:
7.10
4Mb SIMM: ú150 ÖÖ> ú145
7.10
8Mb SIMM: ú300 ÖÖ> ú265
7.10
16Mb SIMM: ú640 ÖÖ> ú590
7.10
32Mb SIMM: ú1350 ÖÖ> ú1225
7.10
Å Speedball II Ö Take control of Brutal Deluxe, the worst team in
Speedball history, and turn them into champions. You can play a knock-
out competition against progressively tougher teams and there is a Cup
option played over four two-leg rounds but the main challenge is in the
full league. Brutal Deluxe begins in division two with their aim being
to achieve promotion and then win the title. You can choose to manage
the team, buy and sell players and let the computer handle events on the
pitch. Speedball II costs ú25.99 from Krisalis or ú24 through Archive.
7.10
Å Stunt Racer Extra Tracks Ö For all you keen Stunt Racers, here is a
compilation of new tracks and scenery to keep you playing for many happy
hours! Stunt Racer Extra Tracks costs ú19.95 from 4th Dimension or ú19
through Archive.
7.10
Å Top quality fonts at less than 60p per font? LOOKsystems are doing a
special summer promotion so that we can sell their 100 Monotype Fonts
pack (full price ú95) for just ú59.
7.10
Å Toshiba CD-ROM driver Ö If you want to run Toshiba CD-ROMs in
multisession mode, e.g. with PhotoCD, you will need a special driver.
This is available as part of the SCSI upgrade for Morley 16-bit SCSI
interfaces (see above) but is also available as a separate soft-loadable
driver for use with other SCSI cards. This costs ú25 inc VAT from
Morley.
7.10
Å WimpGEN Ö This is a new application-authoring package which allows an
applicationæs user interface to be built up, allowing you to concentrate
on the main application code rather than the interface. The whole
process of creating windows, dialogue boxes and menu structures can be
done interactively. The price is ú99.95 inc VAT from Silicon Vision or
ú93 through Archive.
7.10
Å World Development Database Ö CWDE Software are releasing a version of
its World Development Database in general format (as well as in existing
Key Plus and Grass database formats) thus making it possible to use the
data with whatever database you already use. The information provides
social and economic statistics on 129 countries in CSV and text format.
This costs ú35 +VAT from CWDE Software.
7.10
Review software received...
7.10
We have received review copies of the following: ÅBeethoven Browser
Egmontá(e), ÅConjugezá(e), ÅEquateá(e), ÅGridProá(eu), ÅProArtisan 2
CDá(a), ÅSchema 2 (b), ÅSwitchá(u).
7.10
e=Education, b=Business, u=Utility, a=Art.
7.10
If you would like to review any of these products, please contact the
Archive office. Potential reviewers will need to show that they would
use the product in a professional capacity or that they have some
knowledge of the particular field.ááA
7.10
Government Health Warning Ö Reading this could seriously affect your
spiritual health.
7.10
Do you suffer from öBlack Cherry Yogurtò syndrome? When you buy a pack
of mixed flavours of yogurts from Sainsburys or wherever, thereæs always
one flavour that no-one in the household likes! Well, in our case, itæs
black cherry. We buy them because we like all the other flavours but
what happens to the black cherry ones?
7.10
Until a few months ago, my wife, Sue, was always the one who ate the
black cherry yogurts Ö and this, despite the fact that, as I well knew,
she didnæt really like them. (Mums are wonderful, arenæt they?! I donæt
think they get sufficient recognition for their self-less service... but
I digress!)
7.10
I began thinking about the black cherry yogurt syndrome when I was
studying an excellent series of talks by Colin Urquhart entitled, öHow
to love and be lovedò. (Copies available f.o.c from NCS Ö just send an
A5 S.A.E. marked öHTLABLò.) I decided that if I really loved Sue, I
would eat the black cherry yogurt Ö why should she always have to make
the sacrifice? The funny thing is that I have now actually grown to like
them!!
7.10
Yes, OK, maybe itæs a silly example, but the idea of self-sacrifice in
relationships is not a popular one these days, is it? There is much more
talk about how I can be self-fulfilled within my relationship.
7.10
Actually, we have been made to think about the idea of self-sacrifice
just recently with the anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy. We
should surely never take for granted the way those thousands of
servicemen laid down their lives so that we could be free Ö neither
should we take for granted those who didnæt die Ö wasnæt their
sacrifice, in many ways, just as great?
7.10
What does Jesus have to say about this? In John 15, verses 12 to 15, he
says, öMy command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater
love has no-one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.
You are my friends if you do what I command.ò And he didnæt just talk
about it, he actually laid down his life for us when he died on the
cross. THAT is self-sacrifice.
7.10
(If you are thinking, öI can see how the D-Day sacrifice was, in some
sense, for my benefit but how could the death of an itinerant preacher
2,000 years ago be of any benefit to me?ò Thatæs a very good question...
but Iæve run out of space so youæd better ask someone who calls themself
a Christian Ö if they donæt know the answer, they jolly well ought to!)
7.10
Paul Beverley
7.10
P.B.
7.10
Fact-File
7.10
(The numbers in italic are fax numbers)
7.10
4th Dimension P.O. Box 4444, Sheffield. (0742-700661) (0742-781091)
7.10
4Mation 14 Castle Park Road, Whiddon Valley, Barnstaple, Devon, EX32
8PA. (0271-25353) (0271-22974)
7.10
Abacus Training 29 Okus Grove, Upper Stratton, Swindon, Wilts, SN2 6QA.
7.10
Acorn Computers Ltd Acorn House, Vision Park, Histon, Cambridge, CB4
4AE.
7.10
(0223-254254) (0223-254262)
7.10
Aleph One Ltd The Old Courthouse, Bottisham, Cambridge, CB5 9BA.
(0223-811679) (0223-812713)
7.10
Anglia Television Education Department, Anglia House, Norwich, NR1
3JG.
7.10
(0603-615151) (0603-631032)
7.10
Arachne Software Orchard Cottage, East Morden, Wareham, Dorset, BH20
7DL.
7.10
Beebug Ltd 117 Hatfield Road, St Albans, Herts, AL1 4JS. (0727-840303)
7.10
(0727-860263)
7.10
Cambridgeshire Software House 8 Bramley Road, St Ives, PE17 4WS.
(0480-467945) (0480-496442)
7.10
Clares Micro Supplies 98 Middlewich Road, Rudheath, Northwich,
Cheshire, CW9 7DA. (0606-48511) (0606-48512)
7.10
Colton Software (p10) 2 Signet Court, Swanns Road, Cambridge, CB5 8LA.
(0223-311881) (0223-312010)
7.10
Computer Concepts (pp21/22) Gaddesden Place, Hemel Hempstead, Herts,
HP2 6EX. (0442-63933) (0442-231632)
7.10
Cumana Ltd Pines Trading Estate, Broad Street, Guilford, GU3 3BH.
(0483-503121) (0483-503326)
7.10
CWDE Software 1 Catton Street, London WC1A 4AB. (071-831-3844) (071-
831-1746)
7.10
Dalriada Data Technology (p15) 145 Albion Street, Kenilworth,
Warkwickshire, CV8 2FY. (0926-53901)
7.10
David Pilling P.O.Box 22, Thornton Cleveleys, Blackpool, FY5 1LR.
7.10
DEC_dATA P.O.Box 97, Exeter, EX4 4YA. (0392-221702)
7.10
Design Concept 30 South Oswald Road, Edinburgh, EH9 2HG. (031-668-
2000)
7.10
Digital Arts 231 Northborough Road, Norbury, London SW16 4TU.
7.10
(081-679-7307) (081-764-7898)
7.10
GamesWare Unit 26, The Bartletts, Hamble, Hants., SO35 5RP.
(0703Ö456523)
7.10
(or 0243-531194) (0703Ö456523)
7.10
Glyn Howells Sicar Uchaf, Brongest, Newcastle Emlyn, Dyfed, SA38 9ET.
7.10
HCCS Ltd 575-583 Durham Road, Gateshead, NE9 5JJ. (091-487-0760)
7.10
(091-491-0431)
7.10
Integrex Systems Ltd Church Gresley, Swadlincote, Derbyshire, DE11
9PT. (0283-550880) (0283-552028)
7.10
Irlam Instruments 133 London Road, Staines, Middlesex TW18 4HN. (0895-
811401)
7.10
Krisalis Software Teque House, Masonæs Yard, Downs Row, Moorgate,
Rotherham, S60á2HD. (0709-372290)
7.10
Longman Logotron 124 Cambridge Science Park, Milton Road, Cambridge
CB4 4ZS. (0223-425558) (0223-425349)
7.10
LOOKsystems (p9) 47 Goodhale Road, Bowthorpe, Norwich, NR5 9AY. (0603-
748253) (0603-740203)
7.10
Matt Black P.O.Box 42, Peterborough, PE1 2TZ. (0733-315439)
7.10
Morley Electronics Morley House, Norham Road, North Shields, Tyne &
Wear, NE29 7TY. (091-257-6355) (091-257-6373)
7.10
Northwest SEMERC Fitton Hill CDC, Rosary Road, Oldham, OL8 2QE. (061-
627-4469)
7.10
Oak Solutions (p16) Dial House, 12 Chapel Street, Halton, Leeds, LS15
7RN (0532-326992) (0532-326993)
7.10
Oregan Developments 36 Grosvenor Avenue, Streetly, Sutton Coldfield,
B74 3PE.
7.10
PTW Software 72 Frosthole Crescent, Fareham, Hampshire, PO15 6BG.
(0329-281930)
7.10
Quantum Software 35 Pinewood Park, Deans, Livingston, EH54 8NN.
7.10
(0506-411162 after 6pm)
7.10
RESOURCE 51 High Street, Kegworth, Derbyshire, DE74 2DA. (0509-672222)
(0509-672267)
7.10
Risc Developments (p33) 117 Hatfield Road, St Albans, Herts, AL1 4JS.
(0727-840303)
7.10
(0727-860263)
7.10
Sherston Software Swan Barton, Sherston, Malmesbury, Wilts. SN16 0LH.
(0666-840433) (0666-840048)
7.10
Silicon Vision Ltd Signal House, Lyon Road, Harrow, Middlesex, HA1
2AG.
7.10
(081-422-3556) (081-427-5169)
7.10
Solent Computer Products Ltd 2 Mills Lane, Longstanton, Cambridge,
CB4 5DG. (0954-789701) (0954-782186)
7.10
Spacetech 21 West Wools, Portland, Dorset, DT5 2EA. (0305-822753)
7.10
(0305-860483)
7.10
SSERC 24 Bernard Terrace, Edinburgh, EH8 9NX. (031-668-4421)
7.10
The Serial Port Burcott Manor, Wells, Somerset, BA5 1NH. (0749-670058)
7.10
(0749-670809)
7.10
T-J Reproductions Unit D, Canada House, Blackburn Road, West
Hampstead, London NW6 1RJ. (071-372-0515)
7.10
Topologika P.O. Box 39, Stilton, Peterborough, PE7 3RL. (0733-244682)
7.10
Warm Silence Software St Catherineæs College, Manor Road, Oxford, OX1
3UJ. (0865-54382)
7.10
Archive Monthly Program Disc Contents
7.10
ÅáFiles for Schema 2 from Aneurin Griffiths. They print out öHotkeysò,
öCursor Keysò and a öKeystripò.
7.10
Å Programs from James Ridenæs article on assembly language programming.
7.10
Å Printer test program from Paul Hobbsæ Advanced Basic Column.
7.10
Å Files from Paul Hooperæs Multimedia Column.
7.10
ÅáGlossary, latest version Ö Iæve decided not to print the glossary just
yet because it is already 13 pages long (7,400 words) and is still
growing. If I put it on the program disc every so often in Impression
and Edit format, will that be OK? Or would people like a printed
version? If so, once it has settled down and stopped growing, I could
use, say, the middle four pages of the magazine, four months running.
Tell me what you think and keep feeding me words and acronyms that you
want defining.
7.10
Small Ads
7.10
(Small ads for Archimedes and related products are free for subscribers
but we reserve the right to publish all, part or none of the material
you send, as we think fit. i.e. some people donæt know what Ésmallæ
means and there are certain things, as you can imagine, that we would
not be prepared to advertise as a matter of principle. Sending small ads
(especially long ones!) on disc is helpful but not essential. Ed)
7.10
Å 128Kb RAM SSD with backup battery for Pocket Book or Psion 3/3a, ú35
inc postage. Will fill with PD games and software for an extra ú5. Also
Psion Games Pack 1, will work on Pocket Book, ú20, or ú50 for the lot.
Phone 0788-521189 after 6pm.
7.10
Å 20Mb ST506 hard disc with backplane, fan and podule ú100. I/O podule
ú30, CC ROM/RAM podule with 96Kb RAM ú25. MIDI/user port (A3000) ú20.
1Mb for A3000 ú15. Minerva Business Accounts ú55. Flexfile ú15. ANSI-C
v3 ú25. Ovation ú60. System Delta+ ú15, ABC Compiler v2 ú25.
Investigator II ú12. OS2 PRMs ú30. Details from Alan 051-606-0289.
7.10
Å A3000 LC, 4Mb RAM, ARM3, RISC OS 3.1, 43Mb IDE HD in PRES housing
with PSU, BBC B compatible with 5╝ö disc buffer & DFS filer, good
software, manuals etc ú733 (cost ú1800). Colour Card Gold for A3000/
A5000 ú185. PRES double podule expansion for A3000 ú50. PC Emulator v1.8
with DR DOS ú55. Phone 0602-605718.
7.10
Å A3000 2Mb, 60Mb IDE HD, RISC OS 3.10, Philips CM8833 monitor,
Panasonic KXP1123 Printer, Colton Wordz, SimCity, much PD) ú675. A5000
2-4Mb upgrade ú55. Unregistered software: Revelation ImagePro ú75,
PinPoint ú45, Notate ú50. All serious offers considered. Ring Moray on
Reading (0734) 572020.
7.10
Å A310, 1Mb, two slot backplane, green monitor, Genesis, Acorn DTP,
1stWord Plus. Offers? Ian 0734-661431.
7.10
Å A310 2Mb, RISC OS 3.1, 5╝ö external drive, colour monitor, ú200.
Phone 081-986-4442.
7.10
Å A310, ARM3, 4Mb, twin disc drives, 45Mb external SCSI hard disc, 4-
slot IFEL backplane, colour monitor, Qume LaserDirect printer, PC
Emulator software, ú900. Phone 081-715 5523 after 7pm.
7.10
Å A310, ARM3, RISC OS 3.1, 4Mb RAM, 40Mb IDE hard disc (latest ICS
interface), colour monitor, fan quietener, some software, plus PD
software, Beebug 5╝ö disc interface, +40 track drive, DFS reader
software and 50 discs. The lot for only ú600 o.n.o. +p&p (offers
considered). Phone Derby 0332 557751 (eves).
7.10
Å A410/1, OS3.1, 4Mb RAM, 170Mb IDE hard disc, ARM3, video enhancer and
Eizo 9060 multiscan colour monitor. ú950. Phone 0772-634492 evenings.
7.10
Å A420/1 4Mb, 40Mb HD, 200Mb external SCSI HD, ARM3, RISC OS 3.10,
Taxan 775 multisync monitor, G16 Graphics card, Hawk V9 Digitiser, Sound
sampler, Midi interface, ArtWorks, Style, PRMæs etc. ú700 o.n.o. Phone
0277-657147
7.10
Å A440, ARM3 (30MHz), 200Mb HD, RISC OS 3, PCATS Graphics enhancer
ú500. Taxan 770+ multisync ú125. External Syquest removable hard drive
(+SCSI) + 4╫84Mb discs only ú300. Phone 0646-681186.
7.10
Å A440 with hi-res col monitor, ARM3, RISC OS 3.1, 20Mb HD, VIDC
enhancer, CC RAM/ROM podule and Acorn I/O podule ú550 o.n.o. Phone Doug
on Sunbury 0932-783252, 5-8pm.
7.10
Å A5000 25MHz, RISC OS 3.11, 4Mb RAM (upgradable), PC Emulator v1.81
with DR DOS 5.0, Acorn m/sync monitor, boxes, manuals. Excel. cond.,
ú850. Available after Risc PC arrives. Phone 0276-22031.
7.10
Å A5000 40Mb/2Mb, AKF18 colour monitor, RISC OS 3.1 1stWord+, DTP, PC
Emulator, Genesis, Lemmings, Pacmania. All originals with documentation.
ú950 o.v.n.o. Phone Alan Spencer on 0272-316561 (day) or 0275-844388
(evenings or weekend).
7.10
Å A5000 4Mb, 80Mb HD, Taxan m/sync monitor, Prism 1000 modem. ú1050
o.n.o. Phone 0625-429363.
7.10
Å A5000, RISC OS 3.1, 4Mb 100Mb HD, PC Emulator, DTP and software,
excel. cond. ú750. I/O podule ú60, Acorn MIDI Podule ú50, Master 128
ú150, 100Mb external SCSI drive ú200, Oak SCSI podule +CDFS ú100 or with
drive ú250. 250 Mb 3╜ö bare IDE drive ú250. Toshiba 3401 external SCSI
CD-ROM drive ú450. Phone 0602-272282 after 6pm.
7.10
Å A540 (4Mb RAM, 100Mb SCSI HD), Eizo 9060 multiscan, PC Emulator,
Multistore, ú800. SyQuest 84Mb SCSI removable HD inc. cartridge, ú350.
E-TEC P9624 Fax Modem, ú100. Phone Robin on 0663-741419, 6am-3pm Mon-
Fri.
7.10
Å Acorn A5000, 33MHz, 8Mb RAM, 160Mb HD, m/sync monitor, six month
guarantee, software (lots), books, boxed. Offers? Phone Ian on 0734-
661431.
7.10
Å Acorn A5000 Learning Curve, 25MHz, 4Mb RAM, 120Mb hard disc.
Excellent condition ú700. State Machine ColourBurst Graphics card for
A5000 ú290. All with packaging and manuals. Contact G. Rhodes on 0302-
722781 evenings.
7.10
Å Acorn DTP ú35, MS-DOS 5 ú30, GammaPlot (v2) ú15, SystemDelta+ (v2)
ú25, Investigator 2 ú10. Boogie Buggie, Superior Golf, Zarch ú6 each,
Startrader, Word Up Word Down ú3 each or all five for ú20. ARM Assembly
Language Programming ú8, MS-DOS Quick Reference ú5, RISC OS 2 PRM ú35.
Phone 0737-832159 (evenings).
7.10
Å Archimedes/Acorn games for sale. Low prices. Games sold separately.
Send SAE for list to Daniel Peppett, 28 Dene Road, Northwood, Middx, HA6
2BT.
7.10
Å Archimedes products. Impression II, PC Emulator, Books: upgradable
RO2 PRMs, A3000 TRM, Basic, OS programming, Assembler programming.
Offers? Ian 0734-661431.
7.10
Å Citizen Swift 24 dot matrix 24 pin printer, ú100 o.n.o. Phone 081-
898-0447.
7.10
Å Citizen Swift 24-pin colour, excellent output. New print head last
year. Complete with manuals, printer drivers, all leads, 2 black and 2
colour ribbons. Cost over ú375, accept ú125 (+carriage) o.n.o. Phone
Nigel Caplan on 0532-675673.
7.10
Å Computer Concepts Colour Card Gold ú140. Phone 06977-46786.
7.10
Å Computer Concepts Fax Pack ú300 o.n.o. Pace Linnet 1200+ V21/22/23
modem, ú50 o.n.o. All with full documentation. Phone 081-789-2663.
7.10
Å Conner external 125Mb SCSI hard drive, ú140. Serial Port, Econet SCSI
adaptor, 2m cable, ú30. All incl. p&p. Phone Mark after 6pm on 0905-
754277.
7.10
Å EasiWord ú20 o.n.o., Grievous Bodily æArm ú10, Blowpipe ú10, Enter
the Realm ú10, Blitz ú10, Cataclysm ú10, Quickshot Maverick Joystick
ú10, Quickshot Python 3 Joystick ú5. Acorn A5000 4Mb RAM, 120Mb hard
disc, Acorn M/sync monitor, RISC OS 3.1, 1yr old, excellent condition,
ú1200. All sensible offers considered. All prices +p&p. Contact Jon
Aylwin, 4 St Margarets Close, Hemyock, Devon, EX15 3XJ.
7.10
Å EasiWriter v3.5, with manual and version 3 supplement ú85. Phone
0383-739629.
7.10
Å Pineapple 16 bit colour digitiser in external case, v.g.c. with
software and manuals. Works on all pre-Risc PC machines, ú115 (inc p&p).
Phone Mark after 6pm on 0905-754277.
7.10
Å Real McCoy 2 ú12, Chess 3D ú7, 1st Word+ 2 ú8, Genesis (rel.1) ú5,
Ballarena ú5, Boogie Buggy ú5, Grievous Bodily æArm ú4, Drop Ship ú4,
Man at Arms ú4, UIM ú4, Powerband ú5 or all for ú53 +p&p. Offers
considered. All original discs. Phone Neil on 0522-685295.
7.10
Å Rhapsody 2, ú35. Casio CZ3000 full size, multitimbral synthesiser
with midi leads, all manuals, boxed, v.g.c. ú150 (will reduce if
collected). Armadeus with Armadillo sound card, ú65. Phone Mark after
6pm on 0905-754277.
7.10
Å Roland DXY1200 A3 plotter + Drawplot. As new, hardly used. ú525. Also
Multistore II ú25, Imagery ú15, Phone 081-864-4805.
7.10
Å Roland DXY-880A A3 pen plotter ú250, Roland Camm2 PNC-2100 engraver
with Techsoft Designer V3 software ú1600. System Delta+ ú20, Archway 2
with Mahjong ú30, Autosketch ú20. Phone 0986-872465.
7.10
Å Sleuth OCR ú40, Impression Style ú80, Artworks v1.5, ú100, Impression
v2.19 (upgradable to publisher) ú85, ARCterm7 ú50, High performance dual
serial card ú70, S-Base Developer ú150, Acorn Desktop C rel. 4 ú110,
Archimedes Disc Rescue ú20, RISC OS 3 PRMs ú80, ARCbbs ú85. All
negotiable but add p&p. Phone 0633-894533.
7.10
Å Taxan Viking II 17in hi-res mono monitor, together with R140 (like
A440), ARM3, 63Mb ST506, Impression II and ArtWorks. Ideal system for
serious DTP. Also Microvitec Cub colour monitor for games, V21/V23 modem
for comms and KX-P1124 printer for drafts. Other s/w inc Compression, PC
Emulator, ABC Compiler, Archway, Chocks Away, E-Type, etc. Also RISCiX
licence. The lot for only ú700 ono, or will separate. Phone Alan
Robertson 071-607-0700.
7.10
Å Wanted: A-Link for the Psion 3. Phone Derby 0332-557751.
7.10
Å Wanted: Notate or Rhapsody. Contact Colin 0786-461501 (Stirling).
7.10
Å Z88, 128Kb RAM pack, 128Kb and 32Kb EPROMs, EPROM eraser, parallel
lead, soft case, hard top, mains adaptor, Arc lead, boxed with manuals.
ú80. Phone 0705-819125 Ext. 223 (day), 0705-830429 (evening).
7.10
Charity Sales
7.10
The following items are available for sale in aid of charity. PLEASE do
not just send money Ö ring us on 0603-766592 to check if the items are
still available. Thank you.
7.10
Software: First Word Plus ú9, Acorn DTP ú8, DR-DOS5 ú5, Impression
Junior ú20, Genesis ú5, Genesis Plus ú20, PC Emulator 1.7 ú20, Twin ú8,
3D Construction Kit (RISC OS 2 & 3.00 only) ú5, Oh No More Lemmings ú10,
Pacmania ú5, Leading Edge Midi Tracker ú15, Chocks Away ú8, Bubble Fair
ú2, Quest for Gold ú2. Also, new, unregistered (unwanted competition
prize!) Font Directory ú28 (full price ú35).
7.10
Hardware: Faxpack ú185, 40Mb IDE drive ú50, 40Mb ST506 drive ú40, A3000
1Mb RAM ú30, Cumana 40/80 external 5╝ö floppy drive ú40, WE external
disc interface (for A400/1 and earlier) ú15, 2-way backplane for A310
ú30,
7.10
(If you have unwanted software or hardware for Archimedes computers
thatyou could donate in aid of charity, please send it to the Archive
office. If you have larger items where post would be expensive, just
send us details of the item(s) and how the purchaser can get hold of
them.)ááA
7.10
Hardware Column
7.10
Brian Cowan
7.10
I am afraid that this hardware column will not be discussing matters
relating to the new Risc PC in any detail for some time, because I donæt
think I will be able to find the cash to buy one in the near future.
Instead, I will tell you about a new piece of hardware that I have, and
with which I am very impressed. But first an apology for an error in
last monthæs column.
7.10
Correction
7.10
I misled readers last month about the difference between the 486SX and
486DX chip. In the case of the 386 chips, neither the DX nor the SX has
a maths coprocessor. Internally, both chips are the same, but
externally, while the 386DX has the full 32-bit data bus, the SX version
only has a 16-bit bus. Things are different, however, with the 486
family. Here both have the full 32-bit data bus. The difference is that
the DX has a maths coprocessor built in while the SX does not have one.
My assertion that the 486SX chip has only a 16-bit external bus was an
unfortunate slip of the brain.
7.10
PC processors for Risc PC
7.10
It has been well-publicised that Risc PC owners will be able to purchase
a PC processor card for ú99. This will have a 486SX CPU, probably
running at 33MHz. This is, realistically speaking, the absolute minimum
performance acceptable for a PC and it is being marketed at a rock-
bottom price, considering that DR DOS 6 will be bundled with the card.
7.10
It is likely, however, that there will also be higher-performance PC
processor cards available, produced by the PC card experts, Aleph One.
My personal opinion is that Pentium coprocessors will be unlikely as
those chips have a tendency to draw a lot of current, overheat and self-
destruct. There are already clock-quadrupled 486 chips running at
100MHz, and a DX version as a PC second processor seems very likely.
With the Risc PCæs IOMD chip providing high speed access to RAM, discs
etc, and the ARM and VIDC20 acting as a video coprocessor for the PC,
the performance should be stunning, particularly using the new version
of the Windows driver under development.
7.10
High performance PC card (podule)
7.10
Now to my latest piece of hardware. This is the new high performance PC
card from Aleph One. There are two problems with the Archimedes podule
bus. Firstly, it is only 16 bits wide and, secondly, it is relatively
slow. The first point means that there is not a lot of sense in using a
CPU with anything larger than a 16-bit external bus. This rules out the
regular 486 chips but there is a 486SLC CPU produced by Cyrix. This has
a 16-bit external data bus, and is a sort of souped-up 386SX but with an
internal cache, like the 486, and a full implementation of the 486
instruction set. So, when combined with a 387SX maths coprocessor, it is
rather like a 486DX. The new PC card uses one of these Cyrix chips,
running at a clock-doubled 50MHz. So this gives quite impressive
performance.
7.10
With the old PC card, the podule bus provided a speed bottleneck for
hard disc access. This was particularly important in Windows
applications where virtual memory is implemented as a swap file on the
hard disc. I had campaigned for a PC card with its own hard disc, and
now we have it. When the new card is connected directly to a dedicated
IDE drive, the performance is absolutely superb. However, the down-side,
is that such discs cannot be accessed from RISC OS. It is worth
mentioning that, as well as also supporting the old system of PC
partitions on RISC OS drives, it is also possible to access, through the
podule bus, a dedicated SCSI drive connected to the Archimedes. This is
actually possible with the older cards but setting up the configuration
options for all these types of hard disc is now very easy with the
Config application.
7.10
A further advantage of the new cards is that they will support up to
16Mb RAM. The old cards had a maximum of 4Mb, which was rather
restricting when running Windows applications. I have 8Mb on my card and
it certainly makes all the difference. I can now run Mathematica and
other memory-hungry programs with ease, without lots of virtual memory
ödisc thrashingò.
7.10
One could argue that 8Mb is a lot of RAM to have lying around. It would
be nice to be able to use this from the RISC OS side. At the very least,
one should be able to use the PC cardæs RAM as a RISC OS RAM disc when
the PC card is not running. Come on someone, this would be a really neat
piece of programming.
7.10
Another point worth considering is that, if an IDE bus is available on
the card, it should be fairly straightforward to convert it to a
standard PC ISA backplane.
7.10
There are some other interfacing facilities on the card such as an
optional high speed serial port. I will report on these when I have
tried them.
7.10
Upgrading old PC cards
7.10
Unfortunately, it is not possible to install the IDE bus on the old
cards, nor can they be upgraded to more than 8Mb of RAM. However, one
can have the CPU changed to the 50MHz 486SLC. Details of this were
announced in last monthæs Archive. This is an option well worth
considering.
7.10
Some practical matters
7.10
There is only limited space inside an Archimedes case, unless one is
fortunate enough to have one of Ray Maidstoneæs tower cases. However,
hard disc drives have been getting smaller and smaller in physical size
while increasing in storage capacity. You can stack two new drives in
what was the space of one older one. In this way, I have been able to
install a 350Mb SCSI drive for RISC OS together with a 350Mb IDE drive
for the PC card. I drilled some new holes in the old Archimedes hard
disc cradle to mount the drives, together with some ventilation holes
between the two drives. Everything went together beautifully.
7.10
Both hard drives have connectors for öbusyò LEDs. I discovered that two
small round LEDs could be squeezed into the rectangular hole of the old
hard drive LED on the fascia, so I did not need to make any new holes.
Before pushing the LEDs in, I filled the hole with clear silicone grease
for better light transmission.
7.10
Much to my surprise, when I turned the computer on, the LED of the PC
cardæs IDE drive remained lit. However, it eventually went out once the
PC card application was running. It was worrying that the hard disc
seemed to be accessed constantly. I queried this with Aleph One, and was
reassured that no harm was being done to the drive. The disc was not
being accessed Ö it was just that when the PC is not operational, it
canæt turn the LED out. Incidentally, there is a connector on the card
to light a hard disc access LED but the same thing happens if you use
that.
7.10
Finally, watch out that the memory board is installed securely to the PC
card. At one stage, my PC card stopped working and I discovered that the
memory card had fallen out! The PC card PCB is quite densely populated
and there is a jumper link quite close to the memory socket which can
make öclickingò the memory card into place a little tricky; but with
care it can be done.ááA
7.10
(Talking of the new Aleph One 50MHz PC expansion cards, Iæd like to give
a warning to RiscáPC owners. We put a 50MHz card in a RiscáPC and, after
a few hours of use, it seems to have done an auto-self-destruct! Weære
not certain yet what caused its demise but we suspect it may be because
it was in the top slot on an ACB45 two-slice machine Ö i.e. furthest
from the fan Ö and over-heated. The other factor, we think, was direct
sunlight on the lid of the case. Our advice would be that, until you get
your Acorn PC co-processor, put your PC card in the bottom expansion
slot and close the blinds! áEd.)
7.10
LOOKSystems
7.10
New artwork
7.10
Colton
7.10
New Artwork
7.10
Relational Database Design Ö Part 3
7.10
Keith Underdown
7.10
I must apologise for the break in the series. I understand from Paul
there have been several enquiries about it, which is very gratifying!
There were various reasons for the lack of articles but the main one was
that I was not at all happy with the way that the model was turning out
and I felt I needed to work on something more practical. This is a
common dilemma in data modelling, where there is an attractive
theoretical model but the real world does not fit!
7.10
I have also had one letter Ö from a fellow professional, Ian Stafford
from Blythe in Northumberland. Ian makes the point that there is a way
of representing mutual exclusivity in Entity-Relationship diagrams
(ERD). In my first article, I said that I did not know of a convention
for this. In fact, I came across the same method just before I received
Ianæs letter. It is probably worth saying that there are various
different styles of ERDæs, and I use the one that has been adopted by
the modelling tool I use at work. The new convention comes from a
methodology known as SSADM (Structured Systems Analysis and Design
Method). In this method an arc is used instead of a straight line for
the Optionality indicator on the mutually exclusive relationships. If
the lines can be made to touch the entity close together, a single arc
can be used across both. If there are more than two sets of mutually
exclusive relationships and multiple arcs are needed, the members of
each set can be labelled with a number to avoid ambiguity. I have
adopted the new convention in the current version of our ERD below.
(This is probably the only advantage of not having suitable design tools
on the Archimedes Ö we can evolve our conventions.)
7.10
A reminder of the terms used in data modelling and some of the key
concepts are described in the box at the end of the article. So far, we
have looked at the identification of the important things Ö entities Ö
in a model, how relationships are defined between them and how we can
keep the model simple and theoretically correct by breaking a many-to-
many relationship into two one-to-many relationships by finding the
linking entity.
7.10
The next step
7.10
Our data model currently looks like this:
7.10
We have fully defined four of our entities and we will try to define the
two most important this month Ö Person and Household.
7.10
Defining PERSON
7.10
What do we need to know about a Person? We need their Forename, at
least. We have to make a decision about what we do about multiple names.
Strictly speaking, to avoid any restrictions about the number of names
that our database will allow anybody to have, we ought to define
Forename as a separate entity along with a Forename Usage entity like
this:
7.10
This is probably a bit over the top, unless we were researching the
popularity of names in some depth. Instead, I propose we cheat! We need
to know the name by which the person likes to be known as one attribute.
We probably do not need to know about the rest of somebodyæs names,
although we may need to record additional initials.
7.10
We can do this using a variable length string. We need to impose a limit
on the length of Forename; 32 seems to be a value used a lot by systems.
I cannot think of an English Forename that is this long but it may not
be long enough for the names used in some cultures.
7.10
This illustrates the fact that, while there may be a theoretically
correct model, it is not always necessary or desirable to implement it.
However, the bigger and more important a database is, the less such
compromises are likely. I would guess that the Inland Revenueæs database
is more like the model above! Indeed, it probably has lots of
information about the aliases that people use.
7.10
For the moment we will assume that all members of a Household use the
same surname, so that will be an attribute of Household.
7.10
We also have to decide on what we are going to have as a Personæs Unique
Identifier. This is a very vexed subject in the real world as it touches
on issues like a National Identity Card and the governmentæs ability to
keep tabs on individuals. In our microcosm, I suggest we simply use
SQuirreLæs ability to generate a serial number by default to give
arbitrary IDs for each Person.
7.10
We now need to implement the relationship between a Person and the
Household to which they belong. This means that Person needs to have an
attribute corresponding to the Unique ID for Household. There does not
seem to be a natural key for Household, so an integer field will
suffice.
7.10
We also need to know the title by which each person should be addressed.
This is another classifying entity. As there is a relatively small and
well-defined set (in UK usage, anyway), we can probably just define this
as a validation list. It would be better to define it as a table, as
this would give us the ability to define not just the title as it
appears on the envelope but also the form in which it should be used in
the salutation in a letter or when speaking to such a person. I will
stick to the simpler method as it will probably suffice for us, but I
know that my companyæs database includes the latter information.
7.10
Person thus becomes:
7.10
Person ID: An arbitrary identifier.
7.10
Field Type: Integer (serial, unique, mandatory).
7.10
Forename: The name by which the Person likes to be known.
7.10
Field Type: String (length 32, mandatory).
7.10
Title: The title (Mr, Miss, Mrs, Dr., Rev., etc.) that applies to the
Person.
7.10
Field Type: String (length 12, mandatory, value ááááfrom list).
7.10
Other Initials: The other initials for the person.
7.10
Household ID: The Unique ID of the Household to which the Person
belongs.
7.10
Field type: Integer, mandatory.
7.10
Defining HOUSEHOLD
7.10
What do we need to know about Household? We have already decided that
its Unique ID will be an arbitrary integer. We also need to have the
Surname, the full address (including postcode) and a phone number. We
also need some way of handling the fact that the members of the
Household might have different surnames, will have different phone
numbers at work, may have a mobile phone or a fax or even an e-mail
address!
7.10
An iterative approach is a good way to make progress. We can define the
bits we understand and leave the rest vague, for the moment. This is
analogous to the well-known coding trick of deferring the solution of a
difficult problem by calling a procedure within the program, before we
know how the procedure will work.
7.10
So a simplified view of Household would be:
7.10
Household ID: An arbitrary identifier.
7.10
Field Type: Integer (serial, unique).
7.10
Surname: A fixed length string giving the surname used by the members of
the Household.
7.10
Field Type: String (32 characters, indexed, áááámandatory).
7.10
Address: The Postal Address including Postcode.
7.10
Telephone Number: We need to decide how we handle dialling codes,
especially in the light of Phone Day 1995.
7.10
Why was I having a problem?
7.10
The problem is that postal addresses and geographical addresses are
similar and, for a long time, the Post Office was able to manage by
using geographic addresses. Each village or area had its Post Office and
the letters were sorted there by hand by someone who knew the area well
Ö like Mrs Goggins and Postman Pat!
7.10
As towns grew in size and the number of letters increased, this simple
system could no longer cope. The Post Office needed to become more
efficient, so they started to define addresses that were more aligned to
their needs rather than accurate from a geographical or political
viewpoint. Alsager, where I used to live, has a postal address of Stoke-
on-Trent, because that is where its mail is sorted, but it is actually
in Cheshire and shares a telephone dialling code with Crewe.
7.10
This was taken a stage further with the introduction of postcodes. These
are structured in such a way that each postcode applies to a group of
about fifteen houses for domestic premises and a business would tend to
have a postcode of its own. This is described in some detail in your
Thompson Directory at the start of the white pages at the back.
7.10
I knew that a combination of house number, postcode and first letter of
the street is guaranteed to be unique to the house. For example, a
letter addressed to ö619, PR8 3NG, Lò should have no difficulty in
reaching me. The use of postcodes to organise the data model seemed to
offer a way forward and I tried it when writing the first draft of this
article. However, the Post Office uses postcodes to organise the way in
which their delivery service operates. This is not necessarily closely
aligned to geographical boundaries. I tried the assumption that PR8 3
postcodes would cover Ainsdale and only Ainsdale but was not convinced
this would always be true.
7.10
As Paul was well supplied with other material, I chickened out
altogether for a couple of monthsáand as this article is already pretty
long and the deadline is upon me I am going to chicken out of a solution
again and leave things here until next month.ááA
7.10
The Theory
7.10
In the first two parts of this series we have explored and hopefully
understood, the key concept in a relational database Ö the way in which
relationships are implemented. This requires that every entity has an
attribute that uniquely differentiates each instance of that entity from
every other instance of the entity. This is its Unique Identifier or
Primary Key. A relationship is indicated when another entity has an
attribute that matches the Unique Identifier from the other table. This
öforeignò key will always be contained at the ömanyò end of a ö0-to-Mò
or ö1-to-Mò relationship. We have also seen how to resolve a many-to-
many relationship by creating a linking entity with a M-to-1
relationship to each of the original entities.
7.10
Carnage Inc.
7.10
Gabriel Swords
7.10
Carnage is the kind of game youæll either love or hate. Me? I hate it Ö
but thatæs only because I couldnæt do it. I got two thirds of the way
through level 1 and had to ask The Fourth Dimension for help. So, does
this mean itæs too hard for the average games player? Probably not. What
it does mean is that itæs too hard for an impatient games reviewer!
However, if you like to think before you blast then this is a very
enjoyable game.
7.10
The scenario
7.10
Itæs the year 2297. The Earth council has abolished all weapons, and
earth is at peace. Imagine their horror then when intelligence reports
the presence of a hostile alien empire intent on conquering the
universe!!! Oh no, what can they do? Thereæs only one thing they can do,
they bring in some hired help. This help comes in the form of a
Cyberkill Mk III Battle Droid, leased to you by General Deæath, head of
Carnage Inc.
7.10
Its mission, or rather YOUR mission, is to Éinfiltrate, provocate and
annihilate the enemy power...æ Easy for your average Cyberkill Mk III...
or is it?
7.10
This is no ordinary blast æem, kick æem and beat æem to death type
killer game. This is a game where you have to think before you dink...
7.10
The layout
7.10
Once you go through the load-up sequence Ö which includes a musical
excerpt from Mission Impossible Ö you land by shuttle on the first
level. Your mission here is to find the body and Éinfo padæ of a lost
earth agent. Of course, you donæt know where he is, and there are about
50+ rooms for you to explore on your way to locating him Ö not that
youæll actually find him in one of the rooms!!!
7.10
The rooms are 3D, in the style of Pandoraæs Box, and contain various
movable and immovable objects, plus a whole load of suspicious-looking
people. There are policemen, gangsters, Éblokesæ, guards, robots, women,
purple things which zap your energy, things that look like
handkerchiefs, and you Ö itæs a cosmopolitan place if ever there was
one! Some of these people you can push out of the way or blast, others
fight back, so be careful!
7.10
Displays at the top and bottom of the screen give you information about
the objects in these rooms. Touch them and youæll be able to get
information about the objects Ö you might also be able to pick them up,
or throw them, drag, open or drop them... Youæll find guns, hand-
grenades, flame throwers, metal bars, dust bins, boxes... and loads of
other really useful things.
7.10
Playing
7.10
The idea of this game is to find your way around the various rooms
looking for clues to the whereabouts of whoever it is youære looking
for. Nothing is immediately obvious, and to start with you have no
weapons. So you go through doors into other rooms, you open dust bins
and boxes to see if thereæs anything useful inside. Sometimes itæs worth
blasting someone just in case they have a key to a locked door.
Sometimes youæll find a weapon, sometimes a jar, sometimes nothing at
all.
7.10
Having found something, you then have to decide what to do with it.
Weapons are obvious, so too are keys. But what do you do with the iron
bar on level one, or the stick on level two? Theyære not for poking
people with... theyære for opening things, but what and how? This is the
part of the game which needs thinking about. Most of the time, the game
will lead you towards an answer, but you have to work it out for
yourself. If you find a key, for example, thereæs usually a door nearby
to open. Sometimes you get clues by asking for information about the
object youære holding Ö it might be part of a machine, so all you have
to do is find the machine and fit the object into it.
7.10
This isnæt the kind of game where time is of the essence. Usually, you
can hang around and think about what youære supposed to do next.
Sometimes, of course, there are other pressures, such as when youære
being chased by purple worms. At other times, there are objects to be
skilfully avoided or moving platforms onto which you leap in order to
get across a river or some other murky obstacle.
7.10
Level 1 is set in a kind of work colony with, amongst other things,
factories, bars, sleeping areas, back streets and gangsters. Level 2 is
set on a island with spiders, mines, rivers, foliage, a submarine and
soldiers. Level 3 is a kind of derelict area with bombed streets,
sewers, crocodiles, junk yards and genetics labs. Level 4 is set in a
space station Ö I havenæt finished level 4 yet!
7.10
Thankfully, you can save your present position to disc so you donæt have
to start from the beginning each time.
7.10
Conclusion
7.10
If you want instant thrills, this isnæt the game for you. If you want
something more akin to a jigsaw puzzle, albeit with laser weapons, then
Carnage will probably suit you down to the ground. The graphics are well
crafted, full of imagination and detailed. The movement and sound are
good. Thereæs a good balance between gratuitous violence, skill,
judgement and puzzle solving. Thereæs also a fair amount of humour
scattered about the place.
7.10
The only possible drawback is that, like a jigsaw, once youæve done it
and you know where everything goes, you may not want to to it again Ö
though it will probably take you some time before you get to that stage
Ö youæll spend enough time on it to get your moneyæs worth.
7.10
Helpful tip
7.10
It wouldnæt run on my A5000 the first few times I tried it, so the nice
man at 4th Dimension suggested that I do a <shift-ctrl-break>,
initialising the computer without running the !Boot file Ö it worked
well after that.
7.10
Carnage costs ú25.95 from 4th Dimension or ú24 through Archive.ááA
7.10
öHelp Make A Good Impressionò
7.10
New
7.10
Dalriada
7.10
From 7.8 page 17
7.10
Oak Solutions
7.10
From 7.9 page 30
7.10
Multimedia Column
7.10
Paul Hooper
7.10
Genesis Professional
7.10
Well, itæs finally here and I have created my first application. What
are the differences? To say it is astounding is an understatement Ö it
is almost a completely rewritten application. One of the major
criticisms of Genesis II was that it was difficult to use Ö you needed
to have a deep knowledge of the script language to use it to the full.
All this has changed with Professional Ö so much so that the separate
script language book is no longer needed, as everything is included in
the main manual.
7.10
Initial impressions
7.10
The first and most obvious difference is the change in all the icons.
This new look reflects the more polished image of Professional. All the
familiar parts of Genesis are there but they have been joined by a new
application called !GenStyles. This is used to store master pages which
can be defined by the user and then stored for later use within
applications Ö similar to Magpie skeleton pages, the only difference
being that alterations are not retrospective.
7.10
The manual has been extensively rewritten and is now in A5 ring binder
format and includes far more illustrations with detailed descriptions of
how to create many of the new effects as well as much clearer
instructions on the program. All the script language is listed in the
Script reference chapter.
7.10
In use
7.10
Loading Genesis produces a title screen similar to Impression. Clicking
on the iconbar icon allows you to edit an existing application or to
create a new application. Pressing <menu> produces the normal quit and
info alternatives, along with a submenu of the default options. Using
this, you can change the default font, set up the grid, set the level of
detail on ArtWorks files, set the Éhomeæ page and all sorts of filing
options. These will become the default when you start creating your new
application. All your outline fonts will be available because the
restriction of sixteen fonts has been lifted.
7.10
Clicking <menu> over your new title page will produce the page menu
shown below. This type of menu is common not only to pages but also to
graphics and text frames that you place on a page. The style option
leads to a submenu which enables you to name the page, apply a style to
that page, and specify the page size, colour and window controls.
7.10
Other options on the page menu allow you to alter the backdrop and index
words on the page. The normal save page, copy, print and delete are all
here, as well as the option to lock the backdrop and prevent the user
from pulling out extra frames.
7.10
Frames have a very similar menu but depending on their content. All
types of graphics can be used, sprites, drawfiles, ArtWorks, BMP, Euclid
and even Replay and Ace films. The clever new thing is the OLE (Object
linking and Embedding). This is a system which enables you to edit any
of the frames and then resave them in an application. For instance, if
you discover a spelling mistake in one of your frames, hold down <Ctrl>
and click in the text frame. Genesis will then load your text into Edit,
and you can then correct your spelling mistake and, using the save
option, you can then save the text straight back into the Genesis page.
This can be used for all types of frames, not just text, but you do
require a copy of the relevant editor. If you havenæt got ArtWorks, for
example, you wonæt be able to modify ArtWorks files.
7.10
Style menus
7.10
Having covered the page style menu above, letæs look at creating a frame
of text. You pull out a frame using <select> as normal Ö the default
text size will be used if you enter some text. By using <menu> over the
text frame, you can bring up the text menu. Choosing the style option
presents you with the dialogue box shown below which gives you total
control over the text in a frame. Not only can you change the font style
and size but you can also justify it and even set it up in a scrollable
window within the page. The colour of your text is no longer restricted
to the sixteen standard colours, and if you are in a 256 colour mode,
you can use a colour picker to choose exactly the colour you want. The
background can again be any colour that you require or even transparent.
You can save up to sixteen colours in your own palette for later use or
just pick a colour direct from the screen.
7.10
Having got your text exactly as you want it, you can go on to alter the
border. You have four options: a conventional black border, no border at
all, a Ésunkenæ border where the frame has a lowered 3D effect or a
raised 3D border.
7.10
Graphic frames also have a style menu which allows you to alter a sprite
into a BMP or vice versa. ArtWorks can have the amount of detail
changed. By default, the graphic is snapped to size but you can, of
course, resize the graphic.
7.10
Linking frames
7.10
Any multimedia program is only as good as its ability to link actions
and pages together. The new Frame Linking dialogue box shown below, is a
model of clarity. At the top are the events which trigger the actions.
You have twelve alternative events and one of these can be linked to an
action in the lower box. So, to turn to another page, choose the
ÉSelectæ event and the ÉOpen Page <n> and closeæ action, insert the page
that you wish to open in the writable icon and click on OK. The
combinations are endless. The ÉDoæ action enables you to enter a line of
script language to, say, play a sound sample or run a film. You can even
edit the script using OLE from here or remove the link all together.
7.10
Risc PC and Professional
7.10
Having had a Risc PC for a week, I tried Professional on this platform
and, apart from a minor problem with the colour picker, the program
worked fine. In fact, to test it out, I created the example on this
monthæs disc using the Risc PC. If you have Genesis II and wish to run
the example, please use the browser supplied on the monthly disc and not
your version, as many of the new features will only operate with the new
browser.
7.10
Conclusion
7.10
I could wax long and lyrical over the improvements and potential of
Genesis Professional and even after having had the program for a month,
Iæm still discovering new features. Genesis II was a fine package but
Professional is, in a word... professional! If you have any version of
Genesis then upgrade to Professional immediately Ö itæs worth every
penny. If you have been put off by the unreliability of Genesis before,
or the difficulty of learning the script language, try Professional Ö
you wonæt be disappointed.
7.10
The Swap Shop
7.10
After my offer last month, I have had over forty letters requesting
sample applications to which I have now replied. I have decided to
extend the offer for another month, so if you have never thought about
multimedia or have wondered what itæs all about, just send me a few
discs and the return postage and I can provide you with a catalogue and
a few sample applications to try out. With over forty applications in
the Swap Shop catalogue, this is a resource that is available to all
Archive readers free of charge.
7.10
My thanks this month must go to John Wilson of Strathclyde who sent me a
copy of a Magpie binder called ÉDictionaryæ which is a dictionary of
computer terms used in his school. No-one has sent me a Key Author
example, but I have converted a couple of Swap Shop applications into
this format.
7.10
The End Bit
7.10
If you have any questions about Genesis, Magpie or Key Author, or if you
would like a copy of the Swap Shop catalogue, write to Paul Hooper,
11áRochford Road, Martham, Great Yarmouth, NR29 4RL. (0493-748474)ááA
7.10
The Advance Column
7.10
Robert Chrismas
7.10
Advance update?
7.10
Will there be an upgrade to Advance? If there is, will it offer more
features, or just bug fixes? Last month, I was suggesting that an
upgrade was unlikely since Computer Concepts say they are not supporting
their part of Advance. Then I received a letter from Jane Handcock of
Cambridge which included the news that Acorn had told her that Éan
update of Advance has already been testedæ and so they (Acorn) would not
be able to fix the problem she had reported until Éthe next releaseæ.
7.10
What changes would you like to see in Advance? Should it have more
features? How could it be made easier to use? Please send me your
suggestions.
7.10
Incidentally, Janeæs problem with Advance and the Calligraph laser
printer (Archive 7.7 p27) still remains a mystery. Calligraph might be
expected to blame Advance Ö just as, when things go wrong, programmers
can be relied on to blame hardware faults and computer manufacturers to
blame software. However Calligraph, who seem to have been very helpful,
are investigating the possibility that the problem might be caused by
insufficient memory. So Advance may yet be exonerated.
7.10
Numbered paragraphs
7.10
If you want to start a paragraph with a number or a bullet, it will look
neater if the number appears to the left of the text.
7.10
You might try to do this by moving the Éfirst indentæ margin to the left
of the left margin. As the illustration shows, the start of the text on
the first line does not quite line up with the left margin of the
following lines.
7.10
To cure this, put a tab stop at exactly the same position as the left
margin. Type the paragraph number then <tab> to align the following text
with the left margin.
7.10
Remember the ÉNumericæ button on the ruler will allow you to position
margins and tabs precisely.
7.10
Data transfer
7.10
öSorry, you canæt load that file into this program.ò How many times have
you seen some variation on this infuriating message. Gabriel Swords
missed it from his list of depressing error messages in the Comment
Column (Archive 7.7 p51). I cannot imagine why. No amount of crying,
öBut itæs a picture, and youære an art package. What are you thinking
of?ò will have any effect.
7.10
I spent a fair time last week experimenting with file transfer between
Corel Draw and ArtWorks and now I know the first principle of data
portability: ÉYou cannot have too much data portability.æ
7.10
Archimedes users may find they need to transfer files between different
Archimedes applications, or even to and from applications on IBMs and
Macs. If you need to move files to or from other machines, most of the
work will probably have to be done on the Archimedes. There are more IBM
files in the world than Archimedes files, so we gain more from being
able to use both.
7.10
In the same way, it is more useful to an Italian to learn English than
it is to an English person to learn Italian. Italian may be a better
language, but more people speak English.
7.10
Advance is pretty good at handling standard Archimedes file formats.
There is a diagram illustrating this on page 301 of the manual. I have
presented the information as a table below. The manual omits AdvanceWPæs
ability to output CSV and TSV files, presumably because you have to set
the filetype after the file has been saved.
7.10
When it comes to transferring files between different makes of
computers, we can all be grateful that ASCII code is a well established
standard, so text, CSV and TSV files should present no problems.
7.10
I have tried importing Lotus 123 files (filetype WK1) into AdvanceSH and
this seems to work but there are a few things to watch. WK1 files will
only load into a new blank sheet Ö if you have edited the sheet at all,
the WK1 file will just be ignored.
7.10
Files straight from Lotus 123 have loaded without problems although I
have not checked what happens to features which cannot be reproduced in
Advance (like unusual formulae). I have also transferred some Fireworks
files in WK1 format, but here I have had a few problems. So far as I can
tell, they only occur if the sheet is bigger than the AdvanceSH default
size. Larger files cause my computer to crash.
7.10
Next I plan to try altering the size of the default AdvanceSH document.
If you want to try this, look in the !Advance.defaults directory. Before
altering the SH document, make sure you make a backup of the original.
The SH document can be loaded into !Edit and I suspect the size can be
changed by editing the second line. Alternatively, it may be possible to
create a new sheet, enlarge it then save it over the default.
7.10
A wide range of DTP and word processing documents can be transferred
into AdvanceWP, but only if you have access to Impression or Style.
Advance can use the Extension Émodulesæ which come with these packages.
Included with Style are modules to load Rich Text Format, WordStar and
Word Perfect 4.2. There are also modules to load different types of
ASCII files as well as many native Archimedes formats. These modules are
easy to use Ö you just double click on them after Advance has been
loaded.
7.10
Stand alone translation programs
7.10
Thanks to the convenience of the RISC OS desktop, there is no reason why
we should not see a wide range of programs which translate files from
one format to another. How hard would it be to write a program which
converted, say, Microsoft Works files into Archimedes Advance formats?
If it could also translate in the opposite direction, that would be all
the better.
7.10
I would not mind if it was not able to translate absolutely every detail
of the original file. It would not matter much if a spreadsheet lost its
original fonts, for example. A log file listing the details which could
not be translated would be quite adequate.
7.10
Send comments, ideas, suggestions and problems to Robert Chrismas, 8
Virginia Park Road, Gosport, Hants PO12 3DZ.ááA
7.10
CC
7.10
From 7.9 page 35
7.10
CC
7.10
From 7.9 page 10
7.10
PipeLineZ
7.10
Gerald Fitton
7.10
Thanks to all of you who came and had a chat with Jill and me on the
Colton Software stand at Harrogate. It is always an interesting
experience to meet the faces behind the voices and the letters.
7.10
Elementary PipeDream
7.10
There has been much interest shown in Ernie Cobboldæs book-on-a-disc,
ÉElementary PipeDreamæ. The Archive office has a review copy so, if you
feel able to review it, please contact them. You will need PipeDreamá4
and be interested either in learning PipeDream Éfrom the beginningæ
yourself or be interested in resource material for a course in PipeDream
that you are going to teach.
7.10
Stamps
7.10
I have had a wealth of mail thanking IvoráCook for his Basic program
which works out UK stamp values. That program appeared on an earlier
Archive disc as the file [Postage]. Since then I have received a draft
PipeDream custom function version from Ivor. He is still working on it
and Iæll include it on the monthly Archive disc when itæs ready.
7.10
Matrix inversion
7.10
I have received almost as much mail about matrix inversion as I have
about stamp selection algorithms. Perhaps the nearest format to a
PipeDream solution which I have received is from Bob Ardler. The way in
which you use the method he has sent me is to run a Basic program. The
somewhat novel feature is that the Basic program accepts as input a
matrix held as a PipeDream spreadsheet and returns its inverse also in
PipeDream format!
7.10
Bob does not claim originality for the method but acknowledges the work
of two of his 12 year old students who originally wrote the essentials
of the program in Basic for a BBC model A in the Égood old daysæ when
WIMPs hadnæt killed off the thrill of writing simple (and not so simple)
programs. I agree with the sentiment expressed by Bob: öThe sad thing is
that when the Master gave way to the Archimedes, the flow of programming
prodigies pretty well stopped... What became of those ZX81, Pet and Beeb
reared coders?... Current wisdom is that you teach word processing and
spreadsheets, not programming. But for ten glorious years, programming
meant freedom for little mathematicians straining at the leashá.á.á.ò
7.10
However, I would add that Iæve discovered a new breed of Éprogrammeræ
who, instead of writing in Basic, writes custom functions for
spreadsheets and is thrilled by the way in which their Écreationæ takes
on a life of its own. Perhaps thatæs why Iæm so thrilled to have
received Ivor Cookæs custom function version of his Stamps algorithm. Of
course, Basic is much more versatile in that you can Éget atæ the
operating system and, when doing sums, Basic is much faster than even
the best of custom functions. By the way, donæt have any doubts about
it, nearly all the constructs of Basic (including constructs such as
CASE and INPUT) can be written into a PipeDream custom function.
7.10
Lost Wordz
7.10
Following up my comment under this heading in my last article, I have
had a few replies saying that the Éfixæ I described works most of the
time. One disc file which I received which wasnæt fixed was sent me by
StephenáWilliams. His Fireworkz document included quite a few embedded
DrawFiles. He selected the whole document and then executed the Edit
ÖáMakeáÖáMakeáconstant command. All looked OK. He saved the amended file
(overwriting the earlier version as he did so). When he came to load it
Ö disaster Ö it wouldnæt load (öfatal errorò)!
7.10
Stephen is not the only one of my correspondents who has saved a complex
Fireworkz file which looked OK at the time of saving only to find that
it wouldnæt reload.
7.10
In Stephenæs case, I was able to salvage nearly all of his work (it was
a big document) by deleting all the embedded graphics using !Edit. I
guess that he has the non-embedded versions of his drawfiles somewhere
and will be able to reload them.
7.10
This brings me round to my request to you. If you send me Fireworkz
Version 1.07 documents for publication, please donæt embed the graphics
but leave them referenced. Not embedding graphics is my Éwork aroundæ
for fatal errors caused by embedded graphics!
7.10
Finally, on this topic of lost words Ö do not attempt to delete the base
style nor the base HeadFoot style Ö more often than not that results in
a fatal crash!
7.10
Z88 to Archimedes Link
7.10
At the Acorn Spring show at Harrogate, I was told about a new, improved
method of transferring files between the Z88 and the Archimedes. When I
get more information myself Iæll let you know.
7.10
ClassCardz
7.10
This product is not software on a disc but printed paper. Two sets of
ClassCardz are available, one for Wordz and one for Resultz. A set of
ClassCardz consists of worksheets which allow you to work through a
sequence of tutorials and so learn how to use the package. If you buy a
site licence, you get ClassCardz free, otherwise, you can buy them
direct from Colton Software.
7.10
Harrogate
7.10
There have been many changes at Colton Software since Robert Macmillan
left. They have taken on new specialist staff and we met one of them,
Jeremy Turner, for the first time. Better still, on Saturday afternoon
we were treated to his excellent demonstration in the ÉAcorn Lecture
Theatreæ of the Fireworkz package. The application he used for his
demonstration was an analysis of the use of electricity in the home
which showed off Fireworkz to great effect. I have modified his file
slightly and Iæll be including it on a future disc when Iæve checked
back with him.
7.10
After his talk he was approached by many would-be purchasers Ö I can
recommend the Acorn Lecture Theatre to software suppliers!
7.10
In the past, users of PipeDream or Fireworkz have visited the stand with
the intention of having a chat about their uses of a product they used
regularly. This time fewer owners of PipeDream or Fireworkz than usual
came to talk to members of Colton Software (see below); in contrast more
readers of PipeLineZ than usual came along with messages of
encouragement and thanks.
7.10
At Harrogate, I found that many more of the visitors to the stand than
usual were not PipeDream or Fireworkz users but they had a very specific
application in mind and they wanted to know whether the packages on
offer would do the job. More than that, they wanted to see a
demonstration of the package running with their own application. I spent
much of my time on the stand building up a large variety of skeleton
applications using either PipeDream and Fireworkz. At the end of this
demonstration, and only then, would the enquirer decide to buy the
product. I find it interesting that potential customers are now quite
determined to have their own application demonstrated (some in
reasonable detail) before they will purchase the package! They donæt buy
on reputation or on reviews any more!
7.10
I talked to about half a dozen owners of small companies who I have come
to know but whom I shall not name. It would seem that recently cash flow
has been a problem Ö for those of you who know the difference I donæt
mean profitability! A theme they all expressed in common was that they
all believed that Acornæs new RiscáPC machine had arrived just in time
to save them having to reduce the size and flexibility of their
businesses. (I admit to being one of those companies! Ed.)
7.10
Colton Software
7.10
Although there was a RiscáPC on the Colton Software stand, it was not
fitted with a 486 board (they donæt exist yet) but a PC running Windows
was used to demonstrate the PC Windows version of Fireworkz. It does
look good to me and was commented on favourably by the many PC users who
visited the stand. If you have the RISCáOS version of Fireworkz, you
will be able to buy the Windows version at a substantial discount Ö my
guess is about ú75. Get your name on the Colton Software mailing list
for release dates.
7.10
The current version of Fireworkz is 1.07 and, from my investigations, it
would seem most likely that the next version will be released at the
same time as Recordz, the Fireworkz database. The best estimate I can
make is Septemberá1994. I know many of you would like it to be sooner. I
believe an earlier release data is unrealistic but I am still hoping
that Colton Software will prove me wrong!
7.10
Colton Software, like many other vendors, reduced their prices specially
for the Show. These low prices are not Égeneralæ prices.
7.10
However, let me say this to those of you who are contemplating upgrading
your software to Fireworkz; get a quote from Colton Software as well as
your favourite supplier. Colton Software will take a whole range of
packages (even the obsolete Acorn DTP) in part exchange Ö it is possible
that your favourite supplier (NCS?) doesnæt offer that service (yet!).
7.10
In the PC world, it is a common practice to charge for upgrades from one
version of a package to another. I believe we shall see that practice
becoming more common in the Acorn world. I have no inside information,
so donæt read more into what I say next than that it is my guess. I have
said before in my PipeLineZ column that software suppliers (in the Acorn
world) take their cash only when they sell you the package. Every time
they upgrade the product and give you a free upgrade, it costs them
money. Generally, they hope that there will be enough new sales to
offset the cost of upgrading current users!
7.10
Letæs think about PipeDreamá4. The current version is 4.13. It is
Éstableæ; there are a few bugs but they are obscure and well understood.
If (when?) a new version is announced and if free upgrades were to be
given to all current users, the cost of putting the upgrade on the
thousands of returned discs could easily be much greater than the
revenue generated from new sales of PipeDreamá4 (at its new low price)!
What to do about it? Would PipeDreamá4.13 users pay a few pounds for an
upgrade from 4.13 to 4.20? How much Ébetteræ would it have to be before
youæd pay for it? Answers to Mark Colton please!
7.10
Now letæs think about Fireworkz, currently at versioná1.07. When Wordz,
Resultz and Fireworkz were launched, a large number of PipeDreamá4 users
converted to Fireworkz. Because of this, the number of Fireworkz users
is much larger than the number of PipeDream users was when the latter
was at the same stage in its development cycle. The price of Fireworkz
now is lower than PipeDream was. These factors combine to make the cost
of providing a free upgrade to the large number of Fireworkz users, a
much larger proportion of the potential revenue from new sales than was
the case with PipeDream.
7.10
Perhaps the only solution for our software suppliers is to charge for
upgrades. Hence my next question. If you decide not to buy Recordz
(because you donæt need it) but want to upgrade the Wordz-Resultz
combination you now have, would you be willing to pay for the upgrade or
would you expect it to be free? Once again, answers to Mark Colton
please Ö but, in this case, Iæd like to know what you think too!
7.10
Finally (on this topic at least), I decided to Éupgradeæ my
ImpressionáII to Impression Publisher. I telephoned Computer Concepts to
find out how to do it. I didnæt have to send back my master disc. All I
had to do was to quote the serial number of my ImpressionáII (found in
the manual), give them my credit card number and that was that! I still
have ImpressionáII complete and intact. It doesnæt seem right to me. One
thing for sure, if I sold it to one of you and you tried to use it to
upgrade to Publisher then you would be disappointed!
7.10
Colton Software insist on you sending them the master disc before they
will use it as a Étrade inæ towards Fireworkz.
7.10
RiscáPC
7.10
Itæs probably not a PipeLineZ topic but what do I think of the new
machine? The thing which struck Jill immediately was the beautiful way
in which coloured pictures are displayed. Much better than pictures on
the TV. I canæt remember where I heard it but one of the second
processors which may become available is an MPEG board. MPEG is a
compression algorithm for full motion video. The next two Astra
satellites will be beaming down MPEG-2 digital TV pictures at about
15áMbits/sec. This data stream can be decompressed to about 300áMbits/
sec and displayed on a monitor. Phillips, who sell a monitor for use
with the RiscáPC, also sell high quality analogue TVs. When we look at a
RiscáPC, maybe weære looking at a prototype digital TV! If Acorn can get
into the digital TV market, we might find RiscáPC machines substantially
undercutting 486s!
7.10
My only other comment is that Iæm going to wait until my birthday
(28tháJuly) before I give serious consideration to buying whatever is
then the Étop of the rangeæ RiscáPC.
7.10
Finally
7.10
Thanks for even more öKeep up the good work!ò letters from you; Iæm
truly flattered.
7.10
Once again it seems that it is time to remind you that it is quicker to
write to me at the Abacus Training address given on the inside back
cover of Archive than via the Archive office. If you have something
substantial, please let me have it on an 800áKb format disc (I canæt
read HD format discs) Ö particularly if you have a problem rather than a
contribution. This will save me a lot of typing and will ensure that my
solution to your problem is relevant to you.ááA
7.10
Comment Column
7.10
Å Aggrieved editor strikes back Ö In Archive 7.9 p41, I answered Alan
Lattenæs comments by saying that Archive was indeed the last-surviving
Acorn magazine to be produced using Acorn technology. An aggrieved Acorn
magazine editor has taken me to task and so I am hereby repenting in
dust and ashes.
7.10
Seriously though, this gives me the opportunity to tell you about GAG-
NEWS (which may sound like a contradiction in terms) Ö the German
Archimedes Group news magazine. This is a 52-page A4 magazine produced
for the German Archimedes (and RiscáPC?) market. If you want details,
please contact Olaf Krumnow, August-Bebel-Stra▀e 102c, D21029 Hamburg.á
Ed.
7.10
Å Macs/RiscáPCs Ö Alan Latten (Archive 7.9 p41) seems to be dismayed at
the way some of the other Acorn magazines have moved to/reverted to the
Mac platform and Quark Xpress. Having used Quark extensively myself, I
feel sorry for the poor editors. Quark is very slow and not as easy or
friendly to use as Impression (still waiting for Publisher!) and, whilst
there are many features in Quark 3.2 that are easier to implement than
Impression 2, Publisher appears to solve most of these. Apart from the
use of Pantone colours, I cannot think of anything that can be done in
Quark that cannot be done in Publisher (and often Style as well), and
there are several areas in which Publisher is far more sophisticated
than Quark, especially in handling wordprocessing and longer documents Ö
what an amazing utility WordWorks is! The display is far more WYSIWYG
than Quark, with the hardware being fast enough to handle almost
anything without having to revert to Égreekingæ of text (and hardly ever
for pictures, at least I never use this facility in Impression).
Generally, I find that it takes half the time to complete a task in
Impression than it does in Quark. (ArtWorks is very much more usable
than Illustrator, helped somewhat by its speed and the fact that it
doesnæt seem to have the same problems with memory that Illustrator
has.)
7.10
I donæt see why anyone who has used Quark or Illustrator cannot, within
a couple of hours, learn how to use all the features they normally use
on these packages in Publisher and ArtWorks. Another thing is that RISC
OS 3. With !NewLook, or version 3.5, RISCáOS looks a lot nicer than
System 7.1. While this might not seem important, I believe that it is.
When you are looking at a screen all day, the easier it is on the eye
and the touch, the less tired and worn out you feel at the end of the
day. Added to that is the fact that RISC OS is easier to use in general,
especially on filer operations, and considerably faster. I say let these
editors suffer, because we know that when they get home theyæll switch
on their Archimedes/RiscáPCs and wish that they could use them at work.á
Charles Matthews, Leeds.
7.10
Å Monitor resolutions Ö Some monitor suppliers make literally
unbelievable claims for the pixel resolutions of their products.
Monitors are advertised as XGA (1280╫1024 pixels) when they simply do
not have enough dots to come near that resolution. I suspect that such
advertisements indicate that the circuitry of the monitor will process
the data stream for XGA without the picture breaking up, but the
resulting display may be little or no better than SVGA+ (1024╫768
pixels) on the same monitor.
7.10
Whether such advertisements can be described as misleading is
questionable. It is difficult to establish the relationship between the
triangular array of triple dots produced by a (non-Trinitron) monitor
and the rectangular pixels defined by the screen mode. The resolution
limit is, I think, not as simple as Édivide the screen width by the dot
pitchæ, unless you are drawing vertical red lines one pixel wide, for
example. However, if you try to stretch the resolution much beyond this
simple formula, there must quickly come a point where no improvement is
achieved. The skeleton feature of outline fonts may even fail for very
small text.
7.10
I therefore offer a rule-of-thumb to determine the maximum effective
resolution for a given monitor. First calculate the Archive Resolution
Factor (see Archive 7╖9 p16), which is the nominal screen size in inches
divided by the dot pitch in mm! The Singleton Formula then states that
the maximum horizontal pixel resolution is twenty times this figure.
7.10
The results are shown on the quick-reference chart, above. The lines are
deliberately fuzzy because the relationship is not precise. The chart
suggests that I am just OK using mode 102 (1152 horizontal pixels) on my
16ö Eizo 9070 monitor, which has 0╖28 dot pitch. The manufactureræs
claim that it will display 1280╫800 pixels, however, is questionable.
The A540 cannot generate that resolution, so I cannot try it.á Colin
Singleton, Sheffield.
7.10
Å Risc PCs and RISCáOS 4 Ö Well Iæve seen and used the new Acorn öARM
RISC processor based, RISCáOS RiscáPCsò (I get the feeling that Acorn
are trying to ram a few things home, to Apple perhaps...). They are
everything everyone predicted and more. The hardware has major changes
in both architecture and components, and yet Acorn donæt seem to have
had the major compatibility problems Apple have every time they change
hardware to any extent. The Dual-Processor Open Bus is a great piece of
innovation, and apparently more than one extra processor can be
supported. (In future machines this could be useful for, say, Pentium,
MPEG and DSP support simultaneously!)
7.10
I note with interest Charles Moiræs comment that the VRAM shouldnæt have
been limited to just(?!) 2Mb. Perhaps third parties could get around
this but, if not, thereæs always the 16Mb DMA capability using the DEBI
bus. We could see larger and larger screen modes because the VIDC20 can
be programmed to clock faster. As the production rate increases, the
chips may be rated higher. They are currently rated at 110-135MHz but
Acorn say that theyæve got some to run at 165MHz+. I also believe that
16-bit stereo sound should have been standard, but if the sound card is
ú99+VAT like the PC card, I wonæt be complaining. (I heard nearer the
ú50 mark. Ed.)
7.10
Moving on to RISCáOS 3.5, OK, so not much has changed, except a few
cosmetics, but itæs still easier to use and more intuitive than either
Windows or System 7. Those things that have changed are mainly to
support new hardware, and everything else solves all the problems which
various PD and homegrown patches do on my machine! (Acorn are out to
spoil the fun I get from righting their wrongs.) The boot sequence which
is split into pre- and post-desktop areas, is very much like my own,
except that, with the new machine, I wouldnæt need to bother because the
pre-desktop section of my boot is almost exclusively devoted to some of
my more stubborn patches (now defunct). The ability to include your own
applications in Apps covers the other major part of my patchwork.
7.10
So what is left to fiddle? Thereæs the 512Mb hard disc partition limit,
but Acorn are Éworking on itæ and are doing something about the 77
directory entry limit too, apparently. The filer can now display more
than 10╜ letters in a filename, so how about filenames to suit? And
maybe even Replay icons! (or perhaps not...) However, it would be a
bonus to have 32-36 character filenames with the ability to use normal
spaces, to configure both the font size and the number of pixels
(logical) that the filer used for each desktop display entry and have
filename text able to be displayed on more than one line. As display
sizes get bigger, filer font size could go down to 8pts.
7.10
Another nice feature would be if the Task Window could also run
independently of a text editor and emulate a non-desktop screen mode.
This could be fully editable with an icon appearing on the iconbar, of
your own choosing, and the wimp poll allotted to it could be configured
so as to allow slower chips to be emulated. This would be useful for
some old games and such-like which run too fast on newer chips already.
It should also allow full-screen operation in a similar manner to the PC
Emulator/cards.
7.10
With all these new graphics capabilities, something really does need to
be done about Paint. Firstly, it needs the ability to use transparencies
and secondly Paint should be merged with ChangeFSI. Or perhaps, rather
than this last step, a nice modular graphics filing system should be
introduced, integrated into the normal filer, with the ability for
conversions for loading into applications simply by dragging like a
normal sprite. TIFFs, PhotoCD, Clear and JPEGs should also have the
options of not being converted into sprites, as these are becoming
standard RISCáOS files anyway. This would leave ö!PaintFSIò free for
simple graphics processing, like gamma correction. This, combined with
OLE support, would allow all applications which use sprites (Draw,
Genesis, etc) to accept any bit-map graphics format and process them in
the background. There could be standard conversions to VGA or SVGA pixel
sizes and an optional Shift-load that would bring up a dialogue box with
extended conversion options.
7.10
On a similar note, it would be nice to see standard Replay soft MPEG
support in RISCáOS 4, with hardware support provided when/if you buy
MPEG chips. This would give rudimentary support for VideoCDs (another up
and coming standard).
7.10
The pinboard needs radical updating with the ability to save to the
pinboard, which could store the files in a scrap directory, along with
pointers as to where on the screen they were saved. The filer could also
have a wastebin-style retain-after-deleting option with a maximum size
configurable scrap directory which held the newer files deleted. This
could be accessible from the iconbar, with its own icon which could also
be used for deleting.
7.10
On the hardware front, it would be nice to see somebody somewhere
providing 3DO cards, be they DEBI or DPOB. This could be very
interesting as the 3DO standard uses an ARM610 as its central processor.
Maybe the card could be configured in order to allow the second ARM chip
to co-process RISCáOS when idle, or maybe a second ARM chip wouldnæt
even be necessary! The colour support already exists, so maybe all that
would have to be added would be a couple of the 3DO ASICs for
specialised rendering and a double-speed CD-ROM drive. I can but
dream...á Charles Matthews, Leeds.
7.10
Å RiscáPC could be better! Ö The Risc PC is a good machine, and capable
of standing on its own merits, but I feel that some of the comparisons
with other machines have been a little biased.
7.10
For example, Acorn have compared the Risc PC to the Power Macintosh.
While the Risc PC has a lot of nice features, it should be pointed out
that none of the Risc PC range (although I cannot speak for future ARM 8
processors) is anywhere near as fast as a Power Mac. Itæs not dissimilar
to comparing an A310 to an A540 Ö the Power Mac is indisputably more
expensive, but it is also significantly more powerful. Similarly, the
Risc PC is slower than a Pentium based PC, at least while it only has an
ARM610 in it. On the other hand, Iæd choose RISC OS over System 7 or
Windows any day, but thatæs only a personal preference.
7.10
ARM are in the business of making low-cost, efficient, low power
consumption processors, and are market leaders in these terms. Hence, a
comparison of the ARM600 with the comparable chips is, quite rightly,
going to show it in a good light in these areas. But it should be
pointed out that ARM are not building processors for pure speed and, as
such, the ARM series are going to be slower than their competitors.
While the low power consumption is good for portables (for example, the
Newton), it is not such a major issue for a desktop computer. So, to be
fair, the ARM6 looks slightly deficient as the basis of a desktop
machine Ö although, because RISC OS was written for ARM processors, it
was the only choice Acorn had in the matter. On computing power alone,
Acorn have only just caught up with (the lower performance part of) the
competition, and I feel it is slightly unfair to claim processor to
processor equivalence while the ARM6 is significantly slower.
7.10
Related to this point is that the bus (i.e. the connections between a
processor and the memory) in the Risc PC is only 32-bit (i.e. there are
32 parallel connections). Perhaps I am asking too much here as Acorn
are likely to have restricted the bus for price reasons, but there are
an increasing number of 64-bit processors out there Ö the Pentium, Decæs
Alpha, the MIPS 4400 Ö all of which are fast. If Acorn are encouraging
people to plug in second processors from third party manufacturers, (or
if ARM eventually release a 64-bit processor) then the performance of
these chips is going to be restricted by the bus Ö a 64-bit bus can
transmit twice as much information as a 32-bit one (all other things
being equal). Hopefully, the performance loss will not be too bad, given
a decent cache, but to see the importance of the bus width, look at the
performance difference between an Intel 80386DX chip (which is 32-bit)
and an 80386SX (which is almost identical but with a 16-bit bus). The
person from Acorn that I spoke to at Harrogate said that there were no
plans to make the bus any larger, but perhaps Acorn will reconsider for
their next computer.
7.10
The Risc PC currently (although there are rumours to the contrary) seems
to have a 2Mb limit on video RAM. Hence, it can display 800╫600 screens
in 16 million colours, which is quite impressive. On the other hand, the
VIDC20 itself is capable of displaying that many colours in 800╫800, and
(if the frame rate is dropped to 56Hz) 1024╫768. There is a technicality
about the latter Ö workstation guidelines are coming in which say that,
in order to reduce flicker, computer displays should update at a minimum
of 60Hz (compared to 50Hz for British television and for the older
Archimedes modes 0-21 and 24). There is a small but significant
difference in quality between a 16 million colour screen mode and a
32,000 colour screen mode, and since VIDC-20 is capable of displaying
these larger screens, I would have preferred Acorn not to limit their
use. Anybody who has used a 1024╫768 display will tell you that an
800╫600 display feels small.
7.10
I am also a little disappointed that Acorn did not take the opportunity
with RISC OS 3.5 to produce a pre-emptive multitasking system, similar
to that on Unix, which would have a few advantages over the current co-
operative multitasking which RISC OS has had so far. RISC OS 3.5 also
depends rather heavily, it seems, on some compatibility features between
the newer chips and the earlier ARMs (2 and 3). This means that ARM are
restricted to producing chips which are backward compatible with the old
ones, rather than concentrating on the newer design features of the ARM6
and above Ö this consideration is one reason for the inefficiency of the
Intel processors, since even a Pentium must be compatible with an 8086,
designed in the late æ70s. I acknowledge that this will involve a lot of
work, though. Perhaps they will consider these issues in RISC OS 4.
7.10
I hope Acorn will take these matters into account with their next
machine, and that their next machine is not too long in coming. For now,
the Risc PC is a well-designed computer and the Acorn crew are worthy of
a great deal of praise for it; but it is not perfect, and I do not think
that it will have quite the commercial draw which Acorn seem to expect
of it.á Andrew Garrard, Downing College, Cambridge.
7.10
I sent Andrewæs letter to Keith Parker, knowing that he was familiar
with Macs and Acorns, both at work and at home...
7.10
Å RiscáPC, the reply Ö I was interested to read Andrewæs letter but, as
someone who has used Apple Macintosh machines (up to and including
Quadra 950s and the PowerMac) I would like to address some of his
comments.
7.10
The RiscáPC review was written by and for Acorn users so a little bias
is to be expected. Reviews written by Mac fans about Risc PC are just as
biased the other way! (See comments on the PCW review of RiscáPC on page
34.áEd.)
7.10
Speed is a very subjective matter. The current Risc PC uses an ARM610
running at 30MHz, the next 610 chip will probably run at 40MHz and,
early next year, the ARM700 will run at 30MHz+, etc. However, clock
speed is not the best way to measure the speed of a computer despite the
fact that it is definitely measurable. My guess is that the faster
ARM700 will run at the same speed as PowerMacs and the ARM800 much
faster.
7.10
Productivity is probably the best measure of the speed of a computer
although this is less quantifiable. The way that you have to move to the
menu bar every time you want to bring up a menu on a Mac (old or Power)
is not as intuitive as RISC OS which relies on the middle mouse button.
No matter where you are on the screen, click <menu> and Hey presto! up
comes the menu related to the process under the mouse pointer!
7.10
I am particularly aware of this, having been struggling with PhotoShop
2.5.1 on a big Quadra. The process is so slow I have to fight off sleep
Ö and remember that, on a Quadra, PhotoShop runs in native mode whereas,
on a PowerMac, it runs under emulation Ö and I enjoyed some good naps.
(Flippant? Yes, maybe, but PhotoShop is extremely slow.) I was delighted
to be able to save the scanned image (36Mb of it!) as a TIFF file,
transfer it to a Risc PC using a SyQuest and complete the editing in DA
Picture. (I could equally well have used PhotoDesk.) The difference in
speed is quite staggering. The icing on the cake is that PhotoShop costs
ú700 on the Mac, and is estimated to cost about ú1,000 for the PowerMac
version whereas DA Picture costs ú99. Programs such as DA Picture and
PhotoDesk (ú170) should really Éspeed upæ Risc PC sales.
7.10
What I have found interesting is the reaction of companies who sell Mac
(or PC) hardware when they see the Acorn (any 32 bit model). I have been
working with Tony Tolver of T-J Reproductions and he has had a drum
scanner installed. He uses a lonely Mac Quadra 900 to drive the scanner
and an imagesetter and, yes, it is fair to say that the Mac acts as a
slave for his Risc PC, A540 and A4. He demonstrates the power,
simplicity and the speed of true multitasking on his Acorns and the Mac/
PC peopleæs reaction is always (well, 99%) öVery impressive, but why
isnæt it marketed properly?ò But thatæs another question!
7.10
Finally, for Andrew to compare Acornæs Risc PC with DECs, Alphas and
MIPS 4400 is rather unfair. Itæs like comparing an Austin Sprite with an
Aston Martin Ö they both have four wheels, look good and are
convertibles but when they were sold they cost ú2,000 and ú50,000
respectively Ö letæs have a little realism! However, it is fair, to
compare the Risc PC with a Pentium native machine and all I have said
above applies equally well to that as it does to the Macs!
7.10
Overall, give me Risc PC over the Macs and IBM compatibles any day! Now,
if somebody wants to write the driver software for a RIP and a drum
scanner... ? Am I dreaming? Watch this space!
7.10
Certainly, in my area of interest, virtually everything that IBM
compatibles and Macs can do can be done just as well on the Acorn
platform. Also, if we are concerned about the UKæs needs, if everybody
bought Acorns, the deficit on the balance of payments would fall. Acorn
would then take over Olivetti and they would start producing Alpha and
MIPS beaters, 256Mb of VRAM, 64 bit busses and everything else we could
ever want. Am I dreaming? Well, maybe, but the Risc PC can do a very
good job now and it does it without the one thing that is standard in
every other platform Ö built-in-obsolescence!á Keith Parker, Southall.
7.10
Å Wot? No tapestreamers? Ö I am often asked, öWhy doesnæt Archive stock
tapestreamers?ò The less polite enquirers imply that it is because we
make too much money selling removable drives. It is true that we have
championed SyQuest removable drives over the years but only because I
think they are good and have, for a long time, used them for both data
backup and data transport.
7.10
Why not tapestreamers? Well, we used to sell them e.g. I have just
looked at an October 1990 Archive Price List which has Oak Solutionsæ
60Mb tapestreamers at ú1100 and 1Gb tapestreamers at ú2995!!! These
days, the cheapest tapestreamer I can find to run on Acorn machines are
from Morley Electronics: ú699 +VAT (=ú821) for 250Mb and ú1099 +VAT
(=ú1291) for 2Gb. When you compare these with 270Mb removable hard
drives at ú550 inc VAT which are so much faster and so much more
convenient, perhaps I can be forgiven for not stocking tapestreamers?
7.10
If anyone knows of Acorn-capable tapestreamers at prices more like those
you find in the PC world, please let me know and Iæll pass the word on
through Archive!
7.10
The other device I keep getting suggested to me as an alternative is the
magneto-optical drive. True, the media are less expensive than SyQuests,
but the drives are somewhat more expensive and they are extremely slow
by comparison, especially on writing which takes place at roughly one
third of the speed of reading.á Ed.ááA
7.10
Hints and Tips
7.10
Å Cumana CD-ROM 300 (SLCD), Photo CD. I had problems installing the new
module on my A5000. I had followed the installation instructions given
in the help file, putting new lines in the !Boot file but could not
change the module and kept getting error messages. I contacted Cumana
who were very helpful. By a process of elimination, we found out that
the lines added to the !Boot file should be this:-
7.10
RMEnsure SLCD 1.22 RMLoad (Path).SLCD. SLCD1
7.10
RMEnsure SLCD 1.22 error SLCD version 1.22 not found
7.10
where (Path) will be something like
7.10
ADFS::IDEDisc4.$.Cumana
7.10
or whatever the directory is that contains the new module.á Angela
Bareford, Woking.
7.10
Å IDEFS and RISC OS 3. I recently upgraded my A3000 to ARM3, which
proved to be a very harrowing experience due to certain... err...
misunderstandings on the part of Watford Electronics. However, with the
computer back on my desk, I felt more contented, until I discovered that
my hard disc drive disagreed with the new processor. So, I contacted
Risc Developments, who were very helpful, and they sent me a new IDE
controller ROM. I would recommend that all owners of R.D. internal hard
disc drives and RISC OS 3 should get this as it interfaces better with
the new operating system and provides a proper space free window.
7.10
Unfortunately, I canæt do that, as it doesnæt seem to work with my
system. Everything is fine until it has to cope with a file that is
about 1Mb long; this can occur when using ArcFS archives which are
treated as one file or when installing Wordworks Ö the dictionary file
is massive! RD are somewhat confused by this as they thought they had
fixed it, so my faithful little hard drive must be entrusted to Parcel
Force for the hazardous journey to St. Albans.
7.10
Therefore, I felt I ought to warn Archive readers with a similar
configuration that archiving and WordWorking can be very bad for your
general welfare Ö no-one likes having to wipe everything! The versions
in question are: IDEFS v:1.27 and IDEFiler v:1.11 on the EPROM v: 1.33A.
7.10
It is, however, nice to see that some companies can be genuinely helpful
Ö notably those who do not also deal with PC products ...á Nigel Caplan,
Leeds.
7.10
Å Indelible files in CFS Ö Sometimes, in using Computer Conceptsæ CFS,
a file may become corrupted, and end up on the disc as an indelible
file. No direct * command, such as *WIPE, *REMOVE, or *DELETE has any
effect. The simple solution is to create another file in Impression or
Artworks with exactly the same name as the dud file. On attempting to
save the new file, you meet the familiar CC warning message inviting you
to delete the old file and save the new one. When you press OK, the dud
file is replaced by a nice new file which can then be deleted as
normal.á Gerald Moxon, Leeds.
7.10
Å Inkjet problems on BJ10? Ö If you find that the ink stops flowing a
short time after installing a new cartridge, and if the self-clean does
not work, try removing the cartridge and blowing into the little hole at
the side of the cartridge. This trick has worked every time I have tried
it and was taught me by a printer repair engineer.á Clive Bell,
Stevenage.
7.10
Å Menu Help ...continued. I would like to add a suggestion to the saga
about getting menu help, first raised by Gwyn Williams (Archive 6.11
p11), and followed by two articles by Richard Simpson (Archive 6.12 p33
and 7.8 p42).
7.10
The problem is that the Gwyn Williamsæ examples only work for those
mythical owners of the new RISC_OSlib, and the solutions suggested by
Richard Simpson cause other problems which he referred to last month.
7.10
Although I also do not own the new RISC_OSlib, I implemented menu help
using Gwyn Williamsæ solution by including my own function for
wimpt_messages.
7.10
(1) Add the header reference
7.10
#include öswis.hò
7.10
(2) Define a new swi
7.10
#define Wimp_AddMessages 0x400F6
7.10
(3) Include the new wimpt_messages routine
7.10
static void wimpt_messages (wimp_ msgaction *messages)
7.10
{r ;
7.10
r.r[0]=(int)messages;
7.10
wimpt_complain(os_swix(Wimp_AddMessages, &r));
7.10
}
7.10
I hope this is useful.á Peter Tuson, Fleet.
7.10
Å Saving the desktop state at shutdown Ö After playing with !Help and
Switcheræs save Desktop file, I discovered an icon that was almost
completely out of view. The icon is at the bottom of the ÉDesktop bootæ
save-window below the ÉAuto bootæ icon. (it can be seen by loading the
Switcher templates into FormEd, and altering the window size.) It
transpires that it is possible to make the desktop save the current
state at shutdown. It all revolves around the alias SaveDesk$File.
7.10
By typing
7.10
*Set SaveDesk$File <filename>
7.10
the current state of the desktop will be saved, as a desktop file called
<filename>, whenever a Shutdown (Ctrl-Shift-F12) is performed, or ÉExit
æis selected from the Switcher menu.
7.10
I have been unable to find any references to this in the RISC OS 3 User
Guide, so I would imagine that it is not fully implemented, or not
recommended by Acorn.á Neil Walker, Wymondham, Norfolk.
7.10
Å Toshiba CD-ROM drives and CDFS Ö I recently experienced problems in
connecting a Toshiba 4101 SCSI CD-ROM drive to my system. The problem
was that the CD-ROM icon would be displayed on the iconbar but clicking
on it, or trying to play audio discs would cause the error ÉCD-ROM drive
not found.æ
7.10
I found out that the Toshiba EE50X driver provided with CDFS does not
work with this drive, (nor apparently the 3401). Luckily, Morley
Electronics sell a new driver for ú25 which does work, and so these
cheap CD-ROM drives will now work with Archimedes computers.
7.10
Apparently, the latest CDFS is v2.21 and hopefully allows drives to be
set to double speed, and removes the bug where ejecting an audio disc
kills CDFS.á Richard Burrell, Bristol.
7.10
Å Two dimensional scroll bars Ö Hereæs an interesting Éfeatureæ of RISC
OS 3.11. Load up Edit or Impression with a file that covers more than a
screenfull. Now go to one of the scroll bars and click on the Éthumbæ
(the bar) with <adjust>. The pointer will disappear and moving the mouse
will cause the window to scroll in any direction Ö up, down, left and
right! Impression seems to do this better than Edit, but any offers why
it happens at all?á Nigel Caplan, Leeds.
7.10
This feature is part of the normal Wimp-controlled operation of a
window. It is particularly useful in graphics programs such as Draw,
Artworks and bitmap applications with pages much larger than the
window.á Dave Webb, NCS.ááA
7.10
DeskEdit 3
7.10
Risc Development
7.10
New
7.10
RiscáPC Column
7.10
Paul Beverley
7.10
PCW review
7.10
I have had several letters from unhappy Archive subscribers about Ian
Burleyæs RiscáPC review in PCW June 1994. The article stated, öAn entry
level model with ... (list of features) ... costs ú1249. This looks
pretty poor when you consider a PowerMac with 8Mb RAM costs about the
same.ò True, the entry level PowerMac costs ú1299 Ö but that doesnæt
include monitor or keyboard! I have written to the editor of PCW with my
complaint about it.
7.10
Since then, Ian Burley has been challenged about this in an exchange on
the Arcade Bulletin Board. His reply was that those comments did not
appear in the text he sent in to the PCW editor! I will make no comment
on this.
7.10
Slogan time
7.10
Clive Bell of Stevenage suggests we help Acorn by providing some slogans
for them. When the PC cards are up and running and Acorn are ready to
attack the PC world in earnest, they will have some material ready for
their adverts. Clive suggests:
7.10
Å IBM adaptable
7.10
Å Microsoft Works, but Acorn Advances
7.10
ÅáAcorn Assists Intel Insiders
7.10
ÅáAcornæs Window on the World of Windows
7.10
ÅáSpend less DOSh on tosh, buy RISCáOS
7.10
Then his last one was something about rotten apples but it wasnæt
suitable for adverts!
7.10
I donæt think we are meant to take Cliveæs suggestions too seriously but
they kept the NCS staff amused. Has anyone else got any suggestions?
7.10
More info on monitors
7.10
We have tried out some more big monitors for use with the RiscáPC and
have come up with some interesting conclusions. The first is that the
Eizo 780iW is proving to be a bit of a problem.
7.10
When we upgraded from 1Mb to 2Mb of VRAM, we discovered that although
the 780iW is OK at 1600╫600 in 256 colours, at 32k colours, it is unable
to lock onto the signal. The reason is that the horizontal refresh rate
for this mode is 56Hz. In theory, the 780iW should scan down to 55Hz but
the one we had couldnæt cope with 56Hz. The Taxan 1095, on the other
hand, still keeps going strong as it can scan down to 50Hz. The Eizo
also has difficulty with the special Acorn Replay Éfull-screenæ mode Ö
it wonæt lock onto that either.
7.10
We are looking at some alternative 21ö 0.26mm dot pitch monitors to
replace the Eizo. We currently have three 20ò or 21ö monitors connected
to our RiscáPC through a four-way video splitter Ö it looks like a shot
from Cape Carnaveral. This means that we can do direct comparisons
between the different monitors Ö and we can be sure that we are viewing
them under the same conditions. As well as the Taxan and the Eizo, we
are looking at a ÉNokiaæ and an ÉIdek Iiyamaæ and are trying to get hold
of a Phillips Brilliance 2120 (the big brother to the Acorn 17ò, which
is a re-badged Phillips 1720). We will report our findings next month
but if you are wanting to place an order before then, just give us a
ring and weæll tell you our views to date.
7.10
Supply of RiscáPCs?
7.10
We are getting quite a few machines through now but they are virtually
all ACB15s and ACB25s and we havenæt seen very many AKF85s. I gather
from other monitor suppliers that Phillips monitors are like the
proverbial henæs teeth at the moment. Although Acorn say, öItæs OK, we
have a contract with Phillipsò, the fact is that we still havenæt seen
many AKF85s coming through.
7.10
As far as ACB45s are concerned, we havenæt even had enough to supply all
the orders that were placed on the first day after the launch. I donæt
know why there should be such a delay on these compared with the other
two models but obviously weæll get them out to you as soon as we
possibly can.
7.10
(One possible theory is that the supply of slices may be very limited;
Acorn would then make ACB15 and 25 computers because they can make two
of those for every one of the ACB45s. Certainly, Atomwide say that Acorn
are quoting the 10 weeks for the supply of extra slices for use in their
2-3 and 2-4 slice upgrades and, despite ordering quite a number of 1-2
slice upgrades from Acorn, we havenæt had any at all through yet. But
this is just a guess Ö it may be that they canæt get 420Mb IDE drives!)
7.10
If we have problems with getting the 17ö monitors, it is possible that
we may be able to supply an alternative (and, I think, slightly better)
monitor at the same price. (In fact, there may even be about ú30
change!) But weæll have to see how things go in the next two or three
weeks. If you would be interested in changing your order, give us a
ring.
7.10
What we do actually have is a couple of ACB15s in stock now if anyone is
interested. The trouble is that if you want to upgrade them to ACB25
standard, they donæt work out such good value. If you buy an ACB15 at
ú1468 and add a 4Mb SIMM (ú145) and a 1Mb VRAM (ú130), that comes to
ú1743 instead of ú1644 Ö ú99 more than an ACB25 Ö mind you, you end up
with a 7Mb computer instead of the 5Mb of the ACB25. If you are in a
hurry and want to upgrade either of these ACB15s we have in stock, give
us a ring. (For anyone going for an ACB25 with 2Mb VRAM, the price
differential is not as big: ú1644 + ú110 = ú1754 compared with ú1468 +
ú145 + ú200 = ú1813 so thatæs only ú59 extra for a 7Mb machine instead
of a 5Mb.)ááA
7.10
Risc PC Column
7.10
Keith Hodge
7.10
A new machine and a new editor who is going to be stumbling (like most
new owners) through the learning curve, which we all face, no matter how
small the change of machine or operating system. For me, it will be a
very large change, because my present machine is an ARM2-based A305,
which has grown over the years to become a 4Mb RAM, 245Mb SCSI hard
disc, MEMC1a, VIDC-enhanced, RISCáOS 3, NEC multisync 14ö system.
7.10
Why have I changed machines?
7.10
I regularly used mode 108 to allow an A3 landscape electronic drawing to
be visible in its entirety on screen. However, in this mode, the machine
was so slow that if I attempted to perform any other tasks whilst
redrawing was taking place, it was impossible to achieve any real gain
in productivity, plus, with only 4Mb of RAM it also ran out of
application memory far too easily with todayæs larger programs.
7.10
My new machine
7.10
I have gone for the largest machine, i.e. ACB45 with 8Mb DRAM, (upgraded
to) 2Mb VRAM, 420Mb HD, PC card, and a 17ö Acorn Monitor. But please do
not be put off from writing to the column if you have only a base
machine Ö many of the problems will be machine-size independent, and for
any that are not, I can soon absorb the surplus DRAM in a RAM disc, and
I am sure someone will provide the utility to disable some or all of my
excess VRAM, thus allowing me to simulate a base or 1Mb VRAM machine.
7.10
Column objectives
7.10
These are very early days in the life of the machine and I do not think
it would be very wise to set out concrete objectives, as nobody can
really begin to know what the machine is capable of, or what some of
those amazingly clever people who have provided such things as colour
cards, SCSI interfaces, Laser Printer Cards, etc for the Archimedes, are
going to produce for us all. I do however feel that, at first, there
will be a lot of minor incompatibilities to be overcome, and I hope that
the column will be able to compile an index of problems and solutions,
plus possibly a support disc or two, containing these fixes, thereby
saving much heartache.
7.10
Next issue
7.10
I will, in the next few weeks, be transferring all 167Mb of my software
to the new machine Ö by 800Kb floppy disc! (Worth investing ú53 on
RemoteFS? You could sell it on afterwards via the Small Ads. Ed.) Then I
will be fitting my Brainsoft Video/Sound card, HCCS SCSI card and 245Mb
hard disc so that, when funds allow, I will be able to add an HP colour
flatbed scanner thus enabling me to import images from camera and
scanner. I will report my success or failure and also hope to be able to
give details of what power connectors etc, are provided with my machine
for powering extra floppy and hard drives, as I have an immediate need
for a 1.2Mb 5╝ö floppy drive. Will all this be without problems?
7.10
Tailpiece
7.10
This column will, I hope, develop along the lines of the PipeLineZ
column. By that, I mean that it will become a focal point for
information and ideas, relating to all aspects of the RiscáPC, and for
that to happen, it will require feedback from users, about how things
are working on the new machine, and also about what they want Ö without
this type of feedback, software and hardware developers will be working
in the dark.
7.10
I can be contacted by letter at the HES address on the inside back page,
by telephone after 7p.m. and by Packet Radio from anywhere in the World,
as GW4NEI@GB7OAR.#16.GBR.EU.ááA
7.10
Oxford Reading Tree Talking Stories
7.10
Dave Walsh
7.10
Many schools will be more than familiar with these charming and
interesting characters already. Sherston have managed to take a popular
formula from the early reading world and transfer Roderick Huntæs
stories successfully to the computer medium, with the aid of Hannah
Gordonæs narration and the original animations by Alex Brychta.
7.10
The discs each contain one complete book along with a primary style font
(Pipkin medium) and !System. The documentation claims that initial
problems with RISC OS 2 have been addressed so the books work on older,
non-upgraded A3000s.
7.10
The six books cover the whole of the second stage. Somewhat
disappointingly, the books are not to be included in the pack, although
there is a precis of the philosophy behind their use in the teacheræs
notes. This lack of books will be only a minor irritation to schools
already using the Oxford reading tree materials, but will diminish its
usefulness in homes Ö after all, they are designed to encourage reading
of the printed material!
7.10
Having said that, the books are delightful, following the exact script
of the reading scheme but extending the humour and anticipation with
sound samples, animation and the human voice. Each page can be read as a
whole, or have children pointing at the individual words can have them
spoken. The animations are quite endearing Ö Floppy waving his tail as
you hear the squelch of the mud or all the toys waiting for Kipperæs
unique brand of home cooking.
7.10
Sherston have obviously learned a great deal from their Naughty Stories
Volumes one and two. The Oxford reading tree materials are far more
polished. An example of this is the backup of keywords, in context,
after hearing the story all the way through. Each word is shown and
spoken by itself and then shown in its place in the story. Another
feature is the dual ölistenò icon where the user listens to one part of
the page and then has the choice to move on to the second part or re-
listen to the first.
7.10
The program loads a great amount of compressed data between pages so
does run a little slowly. A tip here is to load the program into a RAM
disc, if you have the memory, making the page turns almost
instantaneous, although you will still need the ökey discò in the drive.
Another problem I have encountered with the series is connected with
other programs turning the sound channel off, leaving the reading books
speechless!
7.10
As with most Sherston products, there is a configuration menu that
allows the user to determine the overall volume and whether individuals
have access to the whole sentence öread outò option. Configuration of
highlighting colour schemes has been also considered. A log file will
record which words children have selected individually. An enhancement
from the Naughty Stories range is the ability to have the whole story
read to you automatically either at a slow or fast speed.
7.10
As an extra resource for schools already using the Oxford reading tree,
these books have to be thoroughly recommended as an effective teaching
aid. Even without the printed material, they have a great deal of
potential, combining a structured approach to reading, with the sound,
speech and special animations provided through the computer.
7.10
Oxford Reading Tree Talking Stories cost ú39.95 +VAT from Sherston or
ú44 through Archive.ááA
7.10
Copyright Issues
7.10
Michael Wright
7.10
In his Multimedia Column (7.8 p17), Paul Hooper asked for help on
copyright. Although my day-to-day work is mainly concerned with probate
and trusts, one of my hobbies is music and for many years I have acted
as adviser to an amateur charitable association on copyright law. In
this capacity, I have written articles, and given talks and hosted
question and answer sessions at seminars in various parts of the
country.
7.10
General
7.10
To start from basics, what is copyright? It is a concept which
recognises the need to protect the livelihood of those members of the
community who are gifted with creative abilities, whether they be
painters, writers, composers or whatever. Copyright gives them a
property in what they create. Where the right exists at all, it arises
automatically without the need for registration or any other action by
the creator or owner. It is, in essence, concerned with the negative
right of preventing the copying of physical material existing in the
field of literature and the arts and gives the owner the exclusive right
to control the Éworkæ in question, to do and to authorise others to do
certain acts centred round the reproduction and performance of the work.
7.10
Quite simply, copyright is the right to copy ù but copying is very
widely defined to include not only copying in the usual sense but also
performance, recording, broadcasting, etc. The owner is the only person
who can copy the work; if you want to do so, you must obtain his
permission first. He may refuse his consent; he may grant it subject to
any conditions (reasonable or unreasonable) he chooses to impose; and he
may charge for it. It is his work and the law gives him this right.
Copying without the consent of the owner is variously referred to as
plagiarism, piracy or infringement of copyright.
7.10
Sources
7.10
The modern law of copyright is contained in a code of statutory
provisions as interpreted from time to time by judicial decisions. The
first copyright statute ù indeed the first in the world ù was the
Statute of Anne in 1709. The present UK statutory code is contained in
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (price ú12.50 from H. M.
Stationery Office) which came into force on 1st August 1989. The Act
contains descriptions of three broad categories of works which are
protected:
7.10
Åááliterary, dramatic, musical and artistic works;
7.10
Åáásound recordings, films, broadcasts and cable áááprogrammes;
7.10
Åááthe typographical arrangements of published áááeditions.
7.10
Note that literary and dramatic works are not limited to the usual books
and magazines, but cover virtually every form of written communication,
even private correspondence. However, copyright does not protect an
idea. What is protected is not original thought or information, but the
original expression of thought or information in some concrete form.
Consequently, it is only an infringement of copyright if you make use of
the form without consent; you would not be liable if you took from the
work the essential idea, however original, and then expressed that idea
in your own form, or used the idea for your own purpose (unless perhaps
the work has protection under patents law).
7.10
Note also that it is only breach of copyright to copy a substantial part
of a work. So what is substantial? This is where the fun starts. It has
been held to be a qualitative description not a quantitative one. And it
has been more robustly said, that if something, however small, is worth
copying then it must be worth protecting!
7.10
Ownership
7.10
Who owns the copyright? The general rule is that the creator of the work
is the first owner of the copyright in it. For instance, this would be
the author of a book or article, the composer of a piece of music, the
artist in respect of any drawing or painting, the photographer in the
case of a photograph, etc. The main exception is where the work is
created in the course of your employment, when your employer will
normally own the copyright and not you.
7.10
Copyright, being property the same as a car, a house or a computer, can
be transferred. A copyright owner can sell his copyright, give it away,
grant a licence to use it, and generally deal with it in any way he
chooses ù it will also pass on his death to his next of kin or to the
beneficiaries named in his will.
7.10
Duration
7.10
The standard copyright period is the life of the creator plus 50 years.
In other words, copyright in a work lapses at the end of the fiftieth
year after the year in which the author/composer/artist died. There are
exceptions, but most are of limited effect, although there is one which
may be of more general interest to computer users.
7.10
There is a separate copyright in a typographical arrangement ù this is
to protect a publisher who may have gone to considerable trouble in
setting up matter in type and publishing it. It protects me when I
typeset old music: the music itself is public domain, but anyone copying
it breaches my copyright in the typographical arrangement. This
protection lasts for a flat period of 25 years from the date of first
publication. Under this provision, Paul has copyright in the printed
page of Archive, quite independent of any copyright in the material on
that page.
7.10
Illustrations
7.10
This brings me neatly to the first of the specific queries raised by
Paul Hooper. He asks what the position is if an author illustrates a
point with a graphic taken from a contemporary source. Is it covered by
copyright? Even if the original graphic (Paul refers to a historical
broadsheet) is itself out of copyright ù i.e. older than 50 years from
the death of the creator of it ù the answer is still probably, yes.
There are two main reasons. First, someone presumably photographed the
broadsheet, so copyright subsists in that photograph. Secondly, to
photocopy or scan the reproduction will also breach the publisheræs
copyright in the typographical arrangement of the publication. These
are, of course, in addition to the authoræs copyright in the actual
text.
7.10
This concept of multiple copyright is guaranteed to make the newcomer
reach for the valium. If itæs any consolation, it is even worse in the
music field where performing right and sound and visual recordings often
make it difficult to pick out the trees from the wood.
7.10
Copying from old publications
7.10
The copyright aspects of copying (by any means, even by hand) from books
now out of print or from newspapers that are no longer published is
straightforward ù in theory. If the publication is over 25 years old,
you are free of the publisheræs copyright in the typographical
arrangement; but you are not free of the authoræs copyright in the text
or the artistæs copyright in the illustrations, which, if they were
employees, may belong to their employer.
7.10
If the creator is dead, when did he die? To reproduce his material in
any way, you need the copyright owneræs permission. If you cannot trace
him, it would be scrupulous to include an acknowledgement in any use you
make of his work, something on the lines of: öEvery effort has been made
to trace the owners of copyright material, but I would welcome hearing
from any I have missed.ò There are exceptions, basically copying for
your own private use, fair dealing for the purposes of criticism or
review, fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study; and
there are various exemptions connected with educational use.
7.10
If the copyright is owned by a company which has since gone to the wall
and been struck off, you are probably home and dry. Unless the copyright
is very valuable, it is highly unlikely that the creditors will consider
it worthwhile resurrecting it just to recover a few pounds in royalties.
However, if a company were taken over by another, such a transfer would
normally pass all assets, which would include copyrights and other
intangibles.
7.10
Museums
7.10
The column also enquired about articles in national museums. The normal
copyright rules apply to the article themselves ù has the creator been
dead for over 50 years? Subject to this, you commit no breach of
copyright by photographing or videoing them. You may, of course, fall
foul of the museumæs own rules and be in breach of contract with them
(the National Trust, for instance, bans photography in many of its
properties).
7.10
PD libraries
7.10
If you use something from a PD library which is subsequently discovered
to be not in the public domain, both you and the library are liable ù as
copyright is a proprietary right, ignorance of ownership is no excuse
for infringement. However, under Section 97(1) of the Act, it would be a
defence to a claim for damages to show that you did not know, and had no
reason to believe, that copyright subsisted in the work. The onus would
be on you to establish this ù but the authorities indicate that it is
not at all easy to bring yourself within this section. Your main
protection is that the copyright owner will in practice be gunning for
the PD library to prevent further infringements.
7.10
Organisations
7.10
Paul Hooper finally mentions the Scout Movement. Probably what he has in
mind is that organisations are quite likely to negotiate a copyright
licence which will cover use by any of its members. This could be on the
basis of a blanket fee, which they may or may not seek to recoup by
charging their members, or it may be on the basis of agreeing a fixed
fee for each use which they collect and periodically pass on to the
copyright owner. Either way, it is a convenience to the user who does
not have the hassle of getting individual consent, and to the copyright
owner who probably does rather well out of it, given that if it was left
to individuals, most would not bother to apply for consent.
7.10
Further reading
7.10
The British Copyright Council is always very helpful over copyright
matters and they publish several booklets which are easier going than
fully-fledged legal textbooks. They are at 29/33 Berners Street, London,
W1P 4AA.
7.10
Although the material in this article is believed to be accurate, it is
of necessity an outline only and not complete. You are strongly
recommended to seek legal advice on specific copyright problems and not
to rely on general statements of the law in governing your affairs.ááA
7.10
Games Column
7.10
Dave Floyd
7.10
Following my lamentations about Gateway To Karos not being converted for
the Archimedes, I was very pleased to receive a letter from Joyce
Haslam, the wife of the gameæs original programmer. Joyce is currently
in the process of converting the game to RISC OS and Acorn have kindly
given their permission for it to be released into the public domain on
its completion. Once Karos has been finished, Joyce is then intending to
convert Mirror Of Khoronz, the sequel which has not previously been
released. I certainly wish her the best of luck with this project, a
sentiment which will be echoed by many Archimedes owners, and look
forward to seeing the finished article. Maybe this would be the time to
ask publicly why nobody has converted The Seventh Star, another
seemingly forgotten Acornsoft text adventure.
7.10
Judging by the mail I have received, there does seem to be quite a bit
of interest in text adventures amongst the Archive readership. This is
slightly puzzling as the genre would appear to be a commercial no-go
zone judging by recent releases, which usually signifies low sales. It
is possible that with its highly technical content, Archive attracts a
more intellectual readership than most other magazines. (Flattery will
get you nowhere! Ed.) Maybe the answer is that, with the exception of
the Mad Hatter column in Acorn Computing, text adventures are ignored by
the rest of the Acorn press, and this has inspired adventure fans to put
toner to paper in order to encourage me along those lines. Following the
response, I intend to devote a future column solely to text adventures
on the Archimedes, but what about the rest of you? Donæt forget that
while video may well have killed the radio star, apathy is the true
enemy of all forms of artistic expression. Write to me. I know you are
out there somewhere.
7.10
Finally, on the subject of text adventures, I mentioned before that,
given the memory and disc capacity of the Archimedes, it would be
possible to write a very large and absorbing adventure game. While the
task may be too time consuming and daunting for one person to attempt,
it would be by no means an impossible project if enough people
collaborated and pitched in ideas towards that aim. I therefore throw
down the gauntlet to the Archive readership. Do you have any ideas for
an adventure game? If so, whether they be puzzles, maps, scenarios or
whatever, please let me know and I will try to coordinate them all into
a coherent whole. If the interest in this is out there, who knows what
may come of this? We may be able to raise some money for the Archive
charity pot as well as producing the worldæs biggest adventure game.
7.10
Pinball games
7.10
It has been pointed out to me that I didnæt mention pinball games in my
summary of the Archimedes games scene. The reason I stepped around it
was that there is, to date, only one Ö ArcPinball. This was released in
late 1990 by Shibumi Soft and has subsequently been re-released by
Superior Software as part of Play It Again Sam 2. While its mathematical
algorithms were good and therefore the angles that the ball bounced at
were perfect, the playing area was woefully small and the only
justification for it being the best Archimedes pinball game is that it
remains to this day the only one. Perhaps Krisalis or a company of that
ilk would consider converting one of the pinball games from the Amiga/PC
marketplace or maybe 4th Dimension may like to channel Gordon Keysæ not
inconsiderable talents towards producing a home-grown pinball game that
does justice to the capabilities of the Archimedes.
7.10
Risc PC
7.10
I read the Archive supplement from last monthæs issue with much interest
(and not a little longing) and only have one query on what would appear
to be an excellent machine. Bearing in mind its almost limitless
expansion capabilities, at least within the bounds of reality, why is
the VRAM limited to just 2Mb? This seemed inconsistent to me when the
main RAM in the machine can theoretically be upgraded to a truly mind-
boggling 256Mb. I am sure there is a good reason for this which will
become clear over the next few months but as nobody else seems to have
questioned this, I thought I would take this opportunity to do so.
7.10
Acornæs launch also started me thinking about how the new machine could
affect the Archimedes games market in the future. Having put together a
rough draft containing my thoughts in this direction, I received a
letter from Neil Dickson which, by a rare stroke of luck, coincided with
much that I had written. I have therefore taken the opportunity to
combine both our lines of thought in the finished article, and thank
Neil for his contribution.
7.10
While not everybody will need the power and expansion capabilities of
the new machine, over the next couple of years it is certain to be very
popular and I think that, in two or three years from now, the majority
of Acorn owners will have Risc PCs rather than Archimedes. With the
extremely competitive pricing of the 486 card with the machine, I also
feel that most will buy one at the same time, opening up the option to
purchase IBM PC software. It is also perfectly feasible, given the open
architecture of the new machine, that somebody could license the rights
from Sega to supply an add-on that provides Sega Megadrive emulation.
Risc User may have broached this subject as an April Fool spoof recently
but, bearing in mind that Amstrad launched a combined PC and Megadrive
system a while back, it is not as unlikely as some may think. The time
has most definitely come for those software houses producing native
Archimedes software to wake up to the big wide world and raise their
standards which, at present, fall only too often into the realm of
mediocrity.
7.10
There are, however, positive aspects to the Archimedes games market.
There are a relatively small percentage of games released that are truly
not worth the price of the discs they are duplicated on, possibly as low
as 20-30%. My estimate for the PC and Amiga markets would be in the
region of 60-70%, so, in that respect, we are lucky. However, not
including conversions from other formats, there are very few games that
would sell in any great numbers on other platforms. It has been seven
years now since the launch of the Archimedes along with Zarch which was,
at the time, a ground-breaking start and a game which should have
inspired developers on to far greater things that would have made games
players everywhere aspire to owning an Archimedes. Unfortunately, it was
not to be.
7.10
How many readers of Computer & Video Games, an all formats magazine,
will be beating a track to Acornæs door after their recent headline over
a review which stated, öWho said 32-bit games had to be good? Check out
this awful Archie effort!ò? The review was rounded off with a rating of
10%. What makes it worse, to my mind, is that they were not referring to
a game by a one-person operation launching their first tentative steps
into the software market with a budget-priced release, but to The
Crystal Maze from Sherston. Is this game really as bad as all that? I
have not seen a bad word written about the game in the Acorn press.
7.10
The time for complacency is gone and if the Archimedes games companies
are to continue trading in the face of direct competition from large
corporations with huge resources, they will have to mature quickly and
produce games that are better than the opposition, something which I
feel Acorn have always done with their hardware. Sound and graphics
alone do not make a good game but, with the capabilities of the
Archimedes, top quality sound and graphics should be a minimum
requirement for any game released at over, say, ú10ú-15. By that I do
not mean to imply that a cheap price tag is any excuse at all for poor
quality. Also, the Acorn press must realise that blindly praising every
Archimedes release regardless of its relative values in the wider
computing world is, in the long term, damaging. It benefits neither the
customer nor the games developers for whom a little constructive
criticism could reap great rewards.
7.10
Any comments relating to this column, or any other games-related subject
should please be sent to Dave Floyd, c/o PO Box 2795, London NW10
9AY.ááA
7.10
Advanced Basic Column
7.10
Paul Hobbs
7.10
Bit manipulations
7.10
When a flag variable is required, for example a user choice as to
whether interactive help should be provided, I suppose the first
instinct of many programmers is to use a line like:
7.10
IF <some condition> THEN help_on% = TRUE ELSE help_on% = FALSE
7.10
This has the advantage of being readable. However, 32 bits are being
used when one would do. Normally, this is hardly a problem but when
there are many flags to be saved in a choices file, it would be much
faster to use bit flags (remember that many users have no hard disc!).
In addition, bit manipulation is an important technique which is needed
quite frequently when making SWI calls.
7.10
Bits can easily be set, cleared, toggled and tested as follows:
7.10
word% = word% OR (1 << n) :REM Set bit n of word%
7.10
word% = word% AND NOT (1 << n):REM Clear bit n of word%
7.10
word% = word% EOR (1 << n) :REM Toggle bit n of word%
7.10
IF word% AND (1 << n) THEN ... :REM Test bit n of word%
7.10
A practical example would be to read the É3Dæ flag bit held in the CMOS
RAM to discover whether 3D or 2D templates should be used by your
applications. Routines have been published in the past to detect if
!NewLook has been run (by looking for certain system variables or
modules), but this will probably not work on a Risc PC, or in situations
where the bit has been altered by other programs.
7.10
Acorn have taken the trouble to reserve a bit in the CMOS RAM to denote
whether the user wants to use 3D icons, so it seems to be a good idea to
read the state of it, if you are considering allowing a choice of
templates. I should point out that this particular bit was used for
something else under RISC OS 2 and so, to be totally correct, you should
only use this routine if you have already checked that RISC OS 3 is
installed.
7.10
It is certainly a nice touch to provide both 2D and 3D templates and
sprite files. If I had to work all day long on a slowish Archimedes, I
might well appreciate being able to use 2D templates to speed things up
a little. In addition, 2D dialog boxes can usually be smaller which is
useful when using a lo-res screen mode.
7.10
REM Test program to see if 3D bit is set in
7.10
REM CMOS RAM (i.e. !NewLook has been run,
7.10
REM the lucky user has a Risc PC etc..)
7.10
REM read value of word at loc 140 of CMOS RAM..
7.10
SYS öOS_Byteò,161,140 TO ,,val%
7.10
REM and test bit 0..
7.10
IF (val% AND 1) THEN _3d% = TRUE ELSE _3d% = FALSE
7.10
PRINT _3d%
7.10
IF _3d% is TRUE, i.e. (Ö1) then 3D templates should be loaded if
available. To be really slick, the applications could check the value of
the bit at every mode change and load new templates if required but this
is probably difficult to arrange. Most users will choose a setting and
never change it again.
7.10
More on messages
7.10
I have received a letter from Matthew Newton regarding the piece on
messages in RISC OS in the May issue. He asks about how exactly one
sends what might be called a Écustomæ message (i.e. one that contains
data in a form that you can specify) from one application to another
which opens up many exciting possibilities Ö one such would be to send
debugging messages from one application to another for display.
7.10
To send a user message, all that is required is to pick an unused
message code, build the message block (maximum length 256 bytes,
although multiple messages could be sent) and then broadcast the message
using SYS öWimp_SendMessageò. As the message is broadcast it will be
received by all running applications but, as it has an Éunknownæ reason
code, it will be ignored by all but the applications that have been
written to respond to it.
7.10
For this example, I have chosen a reason code of &43B00 which was used
by the StrongEd/StrongHlp applications at one time. Almost any unused
reason code will do for your own programs, but if you intend to release
your applications to a wider audience, it is important to write to Acorn
and request that a reason code be allocated to you.
7.10
The monthly disc includes these two simple applications, one of which
allows the typing of a text string into an icon, and a second one that
displays the string (i.e. the basis of the debugger mentioned above).
7.10
The core of the demonstration applications is as follows Ö to send the
message (when OK is clicked in !Proggy1) the following code is required:
7.10
DEF PROCMessageSend(message$)
7.10
LOCAL msg_blk%,m_len%
7.10
m_len% = (LENmsg$ + 24) AND NOT 3
7.10
REM the message length must be a multiple
7.10
REM of 4, AND NOT 3 ensures this
7.10
msg_blk% = FN_heap_get(m_len%)
7.10
msg_blk%!00 = m_len%:REM Size of message
7.10
msg_blk%!12 = 0 :REM your_ref (0 = original message not a reply)
7.10
msg_blk%!16 = &43B00 :REM User message reason code
7.10
REM the Édataæ part of the message is simply REM a zero terminated
string in this case..
7.10
$(msg_blk% + 20) = msg$ + CHR$(0)
7.10
REM send message with reason code 17
7.10
REM (UserMessage, no reply required)
7.10
REM the 0 passed as the third parameter
7.10
REM means broadcast to all tasks..
7.10
SYS öXWimp_SendMessageò,17,msg_blk%,0
7.10
PROC_heap_release(msg_blk%)
7.10
ENDPROC
7.10
To receive the message and display it (as in !Proggy2) :
7.10
DEFPROCmessage
7.10
LOCAL msg$
7.10
REM called from Wimp_Poll loop when reason codes 17 or 18 detected..
7.10
REM bk% is the block containing the data returned by Wimp_Poll..
7.10
CASE bk%!16 OF
7.10
REM handle other reason codes here...
7.10
WHEN &43B00
7.10
msg$ = FNstring(bk% + 20)
7.10
IF LEFT$(msg$,8) = öProggy2:ò THEN
7.10
msg$ = MID$(msg$,9)
7.10
PROCshell_IconPut-Data(mainw%,0,msg$
7.10
,TRUE)
7.10
ENDIF
7.10
ENDCASE
7.10
ENDPROC
7.10
Once again, I have assumed that routines are available to claim and
release a block of workspace memory.
7.10
I have used a prefix of öProggy2:ò on the messages sent from !Proggy1 to
!Proggy2 as a means of denoting who the message is intended for (the
messages are broadcast to every task, remember). !Proggy2 will only
respond to messages of type &43B00 that start with öProggy2:ò. This
means that only one reason code is needed for all messages sent between
these applications.
7.10
A much more sophisticated system of user messages is available in the
form of the Computer Concepts Impulse module but the scheme outlined
above is sufficient for most purposes. For those who are interested, the
monthly program disc contains documentation and examples of using
ImpulseII.
7.10
Any questions or comments about Basic programming would be gratefully
received. Please write to Paul Hobbs, Rheinpfalzstrasse 2, 85049
Ingolstadt, Germany.ááA
7.10
Pocket Book Column
7.10
Audrey Laski
7.10
Warning
7.10
In the last Pocket Book Column, I boasted of having killed an
application with my bare hands, or rather with the use of öKill
Applicationò in the applications menu. I now have to report that this
piece of magic does not always work. In the course of trying out various
programs from the 3-Lib collection, I set up a little game called Snake.
I was irritated to find that copies of it seemed to be proliferating, so
I tried first to Delete and then to Kill it. Killing appeared to work,
but every attempt to delete the file produced the message that it was
still being run. John succeeded in stopping it from scattering copies
around, and I have had to settle for letting the file sit still in the
APP directory, hoping it has no more tricks up its sleeve. I donæt
recommend anybody to lumber their Pocket Book with this tiresome little
program, especially as its maker identifies himself as ÉNickæ.
7.10
3-Lib programs on the PocketBook
7.10
On the other hand, many of the other 3-Lib programs make brilliant
additions to the Pocket Book facilities, and I can now join John
Woodthorpe of Rugby in heartily recommending the package; like him, I
have had to invest in a flash SSD to expand my memory to take in all the
goodies I want to use. Iæm particularly taken with a fiendish Solitaire
and an excellent thought organiser called Outline; thereæs a tree
program which makes it easy to see all oneæs directories and their
contents Ö highly desirable when expanding them so much Ö and an opo/a
disassembler, REVTRAN, which John of the far side of the bed is
exploring and will report on soon.
7.10
He writes, ÉThe PocketBookæs ability to cope with applications on any
drive without bothering the user is one of its operating systemsæ most
agreeable features.æ
7.10
Dunceæs corner
7.10
However, one does have to co-operate properly with it. For some time,
John could not get Solitaire to work from the flash disc(A). Poor
communications: Iæd originally installed Solitaire and put its auxiliary
file, cards.fon on the opd directory in M without letting John know,
when he transferred it, that there was an auxiliary file. Solitaire
would only work Ö as the ReadMe did tell him when he checked up Ö if
this file and the application file were on the same drive. When two
people work with the same machine, information has to flow.
7.10
Adventures in printing
7.10
We are about to take off for a month in Europe, and have acquired a
portable printer (the BJ-10SX) which connects to the Pocket Book. In
accordance with Murphyæs Law, the printer didnæt work when we got it,
and has only just returned to us after a lengthy convalescence, so we
have barely begun to experiment, but it certainly does seem to be
printing out Pocket Book files quite happily. Iæm hoping to have half a
novel not only on disc, but on paper too by the time we get back; Iæll
report on any interesting peculiarities.
7.10
Endnote
7.10
Hardly any correspondence this month: only a letter from Alan Mothersole
of Bracknell who draws attention to some useful advice on transfers in
the A-Link manual and mentions reasons why he has bought a Psion 3a
rather than a Pocket Book. This suggests again that any substantial
newsletter or magazine ought to cover both marques.ááA
7.10
Colour Scanning Revisited
7.10
Jim Nottingham
7.10
Following the article on Irlam Instrumentsæ colour scanners (Archive 7.7
p59), a number of readers responded with queries, comments and some
invaluable advice, so this is a resumΘ of the correspondence, in the
hope we may all learn from othersæ experiences. Not all of it is
specific to the Irlam solutions, nor limited to scanning in colour.
Thank you to all who contacted me Ö especially the few who sent an SAE!
7.10
The most common query was öAre there any alternatives to the Irlam
Instrumentsæ colour scanners?ò The familiar names which came up were
Integrex and Canon, the second in conjunction with Twain and
ImageMaster. Richard Readings has taken the latter route and has sent a
most interesting and useful report, reproduced below. (Comments in
italics are my own. JN)
7.10
Richard writes: öI recently purchased a Canon IX-4015 scanner (a colour
version of the one used in Computer Conceptsæ Scanlight Professional
package), together with a copy of David Pillingæs ImageMaster software
and Twain driver. I wanted an A4 flatbed scanner that could potentially
be used on a computer other than Acorn, at a reasonable cost. Colour was
optional but seems to cost little more than grey-scale devices now. The
compact footprint of the Canon was an important consideration. A PC
interface kit and software are available, though theyære quite
expensive.
7.10
öThe scanner, with Twain driver, worked at the first attempt on my
Cumana SCSI interface, and the scan times seem short compared to the PC
set-up I have been used to. The only niggle I have with the scanner is
that it only has one Éproperæ SCSI connector (the big one, rather like a
Centronics printer connector Ö referred to as an Amphenol connector).
The other connector is a 25-pin D-type. I had to get a special cable
made up so that I could daisy-chain it with my SCSI disc. Integrex were
very quick to supply both the scanner and the special cable when I
requested it. (No, thatæs not a typo Ö Integrex do sell Canon scanners
as well as their own Ö and they sell Canon and HP printers as well as
Integrex ones! Ed.)
7.10
öThe initial preview scan is very quick, and high resolution (400dpi) A4
mono scans are almost as fast. (The way ImageMaster first completes a
Preview scan, prior to doing a high-resolution scan of a user-selected
area, is near-identical to the method used by Irlamæs ProI-mage
software.) The image is not displayed until the scan is complete. But
colour scans, particularly 24-bit, are considerably slower. The scan
itself still seems relatively quick, and most of the time seems to be
taken processing the raw data image for display on the screen. Reducing
the resolution and minimising the image area scanned in colour makes a
big difference. (Itæs just the same with ProI-mage. Large, 24-bit colour
scans run to megabytes of raw data and, depending on available memory,
seem to take ages to process, compress and move to the storage medium.)
My own use is mostly high resolution mono scans and, for this,
ImageMaster works well.
7.10
öImageMaster has a user interface rather like ArtWorks, with floating
tool and info panels. I personally prefer the Windowsæ style ribbons but
thatæs just a quibble. I would prefer to have a direct scan button (as
well as F10) to open the image acquisition window. (See Keystroke
comment below.) There is a useful print option that can provide an A4
copy of the scan, though it makes a rather slow photocopier with a
DeskJet! (This is a delight on Laser Direct; fast and very convenient,
just like the Photocopy facility on Computer Conceptsæ Scanlight
software.)
7.10
öIt is possible to save images in various formats, including TIFF, with
various compression schemes. These appear to be compatible with the PC
world, and I have used CCITT compressed TIFF files extensively to
transfer images to Xerox Textbridge for character recognition on a PC.
Itæs also possible to specify which mode to use when saving sprite
files. For example, I have configured ImageMaster to save mono scans in
mode 18 so I can transfer them directly to Sleuth. Only occasionally
does my input produce useful results with Sleuth, but I look forward to
the projected new release, with improved character recognition and
direct scanning via the Twain driver. Having to transfer images to a PC
for OCR purposes is a pain, but Textbridge puts Sleuth to shame, for
just twice the cost.
7.10
öImageMaster provides a wide range of filters etc, but the version I
have (1.01) lacks an undo button. This makes it difficult to do anything
useful so I have little to say about this area currently. I have been
promised an upgrade to a new version with this facility as soon as it is
complete. (V1.03 is now available with Undo/Redo and various bug fixes.)
Those image operations that I have attempted seem slow on my A420/1
(with ARM3), but Iæm used to doing such things on a Unix workstation
which costs rather more than an A420! (with 16 times the memory....). A
useful feature is the ability to configure ImageMaster to single or
multi-task during long operations, or even blank the screen for maximum
performance.
7.10
öI have found that ImageMaster is liable to crash from time to time,
occasionally hanging the Archimedes and necessitating a reboot. It will
be interesting to see if the upgrade (with the öundoò button) will
improve things.
7.10
öWhen I have had to retouch scanned images, I have had to resort to
Paint, but I find this very limited.
7.10
öIn conclusion, I have no complaint about the Canon scanner and although
ImageMaster is currently a little rough round the edges, it shows
considerable promise. What is needed is a combined scanning/image
processing/retouching program, like Photoshop, but cheaper!ò Richard
Readings, Wokingham.
7.10
Having recently had an opportunity to use Twain and ImageMaster in
conjunction with my Epson 6500, I would agree with everything Richard
has said about the excellence of Twain and the limitations of
ImageMaster v1.01. We have now received v1.03 which is looking good but,
at the time of writing, neither of us has had an opportunity to give it
a thorough check-out. One particular feature struck me as being
especially valuable; David Pilling confirms that the software brightness
Écontrolæ works with the Canon IX3010 monochrome scanner as used by
Scanlight Professional which does not have the brightness control and
which, as a result, I found virtually unusable.
7.10
Regarding my Keystroke comment in Richardæs report, Iæve set up a
Keystroke hot-key combination (ALT-Copy) which, whenever I want a quick
photocopy of something, loads Twain and ImageMaster, opens the image
window, initiates an A4 scan and prints the result, mostly in the
background. OK, I have to remember to first put the document to be
copied in the scanner(!), but what more could a chap want?
7.10
As we have come to expect with anything from the Pilling stable, Twain
and ImageMaster represent remarkable value for money, particularly if
bought under Davidæs introductory offer. He is being his usual very
helpful self in listening to customersæ requests and smoothing off the
Érough edgesæ.
7.10
However, I would like to play devilæs advocate here and throw up a
warning flag. In theory, it would be possible to put together what, on
the face of it, could be a very cheap scanning system, by using Twain/
ImageMaster to drive a monochrome or colour scanner bought from a deep-
discount Ébox-shifteræ. Personally, I would strongly advise against
taking this route as it would be quite unreasonable to expect David
Pilling to support the hardware elements of the system (including the
all-important interface) should there be problems and, from my
experience, Acorn, Epson, et al are unlikely to support something which
they do not see as their specific Épart of shipæ. SCSI interfaces seem
to be the weak link. You may be as lucky as Richard was but, for
example, if the scanner doesnæt work on your particular set-up, whoæs
going to fix it?
7.10
I know that Richard agrees with me on this one and he elected to get a
complete package from Integrex who, it appears, have been both
knowledgeable and helpful. Similarly, Iæve had splendid service from
Irlam. I have my own (unprintable) thoughts on which box-shifters to
avoid; no doubt Ed will advise in particular cases.
7.10
Having now used both ProI-mage and Twain/ImageMaster to drive my Epson
6500, do I have a preference? To this, I would Ésayæ horses for
coursesò, or öyer pays yer money...ò.
7.10
Irlamæs ProI-mage has been around for a good while, is an extremely
capable and stable package which very effectively supports a good range
of colour scanners Ö but it doesnæt come cheap and there are some
limitations, albeit minor ones. (To be fair to Irlam, we can expect to
see their prices dropping shortly because market forces, such as
increasing interest, falling scanner prices and economies of scale,
allow them to pass on savings to the customer.)
7.10
David Pillingæs Twain and ImageMaster are relatively new runners with
some residual rough edges but are exceptional value and, between them,
support a fair range of monochrome and colour scanners (expanding all
the time) and offer post-scan processing facilities. Scanner/interface
support could prove a problem unless you have confidence in the package
supplier.
7.10
To dither or not to dither...
7.10
Now to cover a few more readersæ queries. In each case, I have taken
advice from one or more experts and will try to give a resumΘ. Firstly,
and specific to ProI-mage, should Dither be switched on or off? The user
manual says that, normally, Dither should be switched on for best screen
presentation. However, you should switch Dither off if you are
converting images to monochrome using ChangeFSI or, more importantly,
printing (as it will clash with the printer driver halftoning).
Invariably, I will be printing the scanned image, so I have Dither
switched off as a default.
7.10
Scanner resolution
7.10
There has been considerable confusion and discussion over scanner
resolution. Although, for example, my Epson 6500 is advertised as a 1200
dpi machine, the optical resolution of the scanner is actually only 300
dpi and the higher resolutions are synthesised by software processing as
the scan progresses. In principle, this feature seems to be common to
all scanner/software systems, the major differences being the optical
resolution of the scanner (which may be quite different in the
horizontal and vertical axes) and whether, when resolutions higher than
the scanneræs optical capability are required, synthesising takes place
within the scanner itself or by the image processing software during or
after the scanning process.
7.10
One reader raised this point with regard to image storage, the gist
being that high-resolution scans, even in monochrome, can quickly eat up
disc space. He recommended initially scanning and storing a low-
resolution image, subsequently processing to high-resolution immediately
prior to printing. My own feeling is that this is quite valid for a one-
off print but that the hi-res image could not be exported to other
applications (e.g. DTP) or saved for future use without negating the
original savings.
7.10
Gamma correction
7.10
Iæve left the difficult one until near-last... There were numerous
queries along the lines öWhat is Gamma?ò and öWhat Gamma correction
should I set?ò. I received reams of extremely complex explanation and
advice from the experts on this one but readily admit that, as a non-
techie user, I failed to understand virtually all of it. So on the
assumption that those who sent in the queries are in the same boat as me
(otherwise they would probably know the answer), and at risk of
offending the experts, I will try to give a much-simplified picture.
7.10
As an end-user, it seems to me that the effect of the Gamma control in
ProI-mage, ChangeFSI and many other image-processing applications has a
somewhat similar effect to the contrast control on a monitor or TV.
Indeed, the control which seems to have an identical effect in
ImageMaster is called Contrast, so I feel we are on the right track.
However, a monitor/TV contrast control seems to affect both ends of the
spectrum, i.e. a low contrast setting will turn black into dark grey and
white into light grey, to produce a rather Éflatæ picture. It seems that
Gamma correction leaves the white end alone and affects only the black
end.
7.10
So why should we wish to apply Gamma correction? Probably the major
reason is to improve printed images. We can be reasonably sure that what
appears white on the monitor will be white on paper. However, darker
shades on a Éback-litæ monitor will invariably come out far too dark on
paper. Dark greys, for example, can turn almost black. Hence the need
for a process that will leave whites alone, but lighten the darker
shades; Gamma correction seems to do exactly that.
7.10
Note that the numerical value for Gamma for no correction at all is
unity (1.0). The correction to lighten the dark end will be greater than
1.0. (Conversely, to increase the contrast by moving dark greys towards
black, values less than 1.0 should be used.)
7.10
So what value should we set? Unfortunately, there is no one answer I can
give apart from ösuck it and seeò. This is because there are so many
variables; the image quality, monitor brightness/contrast settings, the
printer and its resolution, material (paper type/transparencies),
personal preference, and so on. Even changing printer resolution Ö from
300 to pseudo-600dpi on Laser Direct for example Ö can have a marked
effect on perceived image contrast when printed. However, a numerical
Gamma value of 2.2 appears in various publications and, for me, has
always been a good starting point. With a modicum of trial and error,
you will soon get a feel for what Gamma to set routinely, for the
particular image and your own set-up, to achieve the desired results.
Does anyone have further advice on this one please?
7.10
Comments, please
7.10
Finally, can I invite comments and ideas from anyone who has tried out
the scanning process recommended by Irlam as described in the original
article (scanning at low-resolution and processing in ChangeFSI prior to
printing). Iæve made a few admittedly half-hearted attempts at getting
to grips with this but with only limited success. The main problem has
been that my printed results have been somewhat unpredictable, not
helped by the fact that, as Irlam have said, the screen image after
processing will look pretty awful.
7.10
As before, I would welcome inputs to me at 16 Westfield Close,
Pocklington, York, YO4 2EY.ááA
7.10
Small Steps
7.10
Richard Rymarz
7.10
Small Steps is a dedicated database-style program that attempts to
simplify the planning and recording of Key Stage 1 of the National
Curriculum. It has been written by Derek Allen and is published by
Resource, an educational software house based in Doncaster. (Now moved
to Kegworth, Derbyshire! Ed.)
7.10
The package includes two discs, the first of which contains the program
and field data. This can be installed onto hard disc without any
problems. The second disc includes the curriculum data for English,
Mathematics and Science and a full guide. These are supplied as
Easiwriter, Pendown or !Edit files and can be printed at leisure. There
is an A4 written guide which takes the user through the installation,
Égetting startedæ and overview stages.
7.10
Aims
7.10
Small Steps is designed to break down the very broad statements within
the Attainment Targets of the core subjects of English, Mathematics and
Science of the National Curriculum. It also contains a user definable
option to allow one chosen curriculum area to be included. It is one of
the great criticisms of the N/C that the sub-divisions are too broad and
that the difference between the levels is too great Ö Small Steps is an
attempt to remedy this situation.
7.10
The full guide notes proclaim very distinct aims and I quote:
7.10
öThe Small Steps program records will serve a variety of purposes:
7.10
They will identify which Attainment Targets (and Programmes of Study) a
pupil has studied;
7.10
They will record a pupilæs level of attainment and speed of progress as
measured against nationally prescribed statements of attainment;
7.10
They will provide a teacher with information which will enable schemes
of work, allocation of resources, teaching methods, staff deployment and
classroom organisation to be evaluated and modified where appropriate;
7.10
They will provide important information when pupils change schools;
7.10
They will provide feedback to pupils and a basis for discussion about
their achievements and areas for future effort;
7.10
They will provide the evidence which will be used as a basis for
negotiation and discussion with parents about the achievements of their
pupils; (Curriculum Guidance 1. Framework for the Primary Curriculum
p15).
7.10
In addition, the school management disc will manipulate and print
personal information on pupils. e.g. Form 7 information, class lists,
etc.ò
7.10
These are extremely ambitious aims. Teachers know only too well the
complexity of recording the N/C and any aid should be applauded,
however...
7.10
The program Ö criticisms
7.10
Maybe I am fussy but it seems to me that most programs written for the
Acorn range should be multitasking. There are exceptions which break
this convention, especially in education where art, adventure and
simulation programs do not need a multitasking environment. However, a
management package must multitask since information needs to be
transferred from application to application. As a Headteacher, I need to
be able to move data in and out of Ovation, Style, PipeDream, or
whatever, and I need to be able to do it easily. Small Steps is NOT
multitasking and takes over the whole screen in mode 12. It allows the
export of information as Edit files but in a rather convoluted way since
the program has to be exited. Furthermore, there is no provision to
export as CSV files for instance, so I cannot transfer information into
another database package for further manipulation. Another criticism is
that I had problems using my Laser Direct printer and could not get it
to print properly. On top of that, outline fonts cannot be used although
this is a very minor quibble.
7.10
The program Ö in use
7.10
Clicking on !Steps results in a date check and then a fairly attractive
main screen that offers four options: curriculum, analysis, toolkit and
closedown. Clicking one of the first three results in a variety of pages
which can be followed quite easily. For instance, following the
curriculum window leads the user through the subject area, the
Attainment Target, the level of attainment and the editor which then
lists the statements and the small steps defined from it. These can be
changed, deleted or added to. Exiting the editor results in the changes
being saved.
7.10
The Toolkit option allows the user to enter class lists, design a chosen
subject, edit the pupil names, draft a review of progress and print
selected information.
7.10
The analysis option allows the teacher to review progress made by the
pupil and prepare a plan for either an individual or a group.
7.10
Many of the pages have a help option which is quite useful if the user
gets lost among the range of pages.
7.10
Conclusion
7.10
I have been quite critical of the program design. However, everything
moves very quickly, especially on my A5000 and, as familiarity grows,
the possible seeds of using the program do germinate. It is daunting at
first and I feel that only experienced or very brave users would attempt
to use it to accomplish the stated aims. Curriculum management packages
do not seem to make much impact (what happened to P.I.P.P.?) and there
are possible changes just round the corner with the Dearing Report.
There may be a niche for a program like Small Steps but future
developments in the N/C, teacher resistance to complicated programs, the
scepticism of computer-based methods as distinct from tried and tested
paper-based methods and the sheer effort of entering the appropriate
data, make me doubtful. I have attempted to give a flavour of what Small
Steps attempts to do but if you find your curriculum planning, record-
keeping and analysis of pupil attainment lacking, you may find a use for
this program.
7.10
Small Steps costs ú99 +VAT from Resource for a single user version and
ú199 +VAT for a site licence. A second pack covering History, Geography,
Technology, Music and Art at the same levels is in preparation. It will
cost ú49 +VAT for a single user or ú99 +VAT for a site licence.ááA
7.10
First Impressions of Risc PC Ö 1
7.10
Paul Hooper
7.10
A Risc PC for a whole week? When Paul mentioned it to me, I jumped at
the offer. All I had to do was write a piece about my first impressions
Ö a fair exchange. When I got home with the machine, there, waiting on
my doorstep, was Impression Publisher. So this is the result Ö an
article written on the Risc PC using Impression Publisher. (...but
converted back to Impression II on my A540 to produce the magazine Ö I
canæt afford a RiscáPC just yet! Ed.)
7.10
The technical details have been covered in great detail in all the other
publications, so what I would like to look at is the feel and style of
RiscáPC and what it is like to use.
7.10
Set up
7.10
The machine I used was a Risc PC ACB25 with 200 Mb hard drive and 1Mb
VRAM but it had been upgraded from 4 to 8Mb of DRAM connected to the
AKF60 monitor. The hard disc was packed with programs, most of which I
had little time to use, but there is a table of what software works with
the machine set out below.
7.10
Setting up the Risc PC was easy, despite the fact that I had no manuals.
The connections at the rear of the main slice had little icons which
showed you which lead to connect to it. I first decided to mount the
main slice in Ébookcaseæ style, but I found the insertion of floppy
discs was very awkward, and my young daughter kept trying to insert the
floppy upside down. So, the little plastic feet came off and the main
slice went under the monitor. This seemed fine but, as I began to type,
my heavy-handed use of the keyboard tended to make the monitor wobble
slightly. The problem was soon solved and the slice went under the
printer next to the monitor.
7.10
Up and running
7.10
Powering up produced very little difference to my A5000 as I use the
NewLook icons as a default on that machine. The palette icon has gone,
and in its place was a little TV icon called the display manager. A
click with <select> brought up a menu showing the number of colours and
the screen resolution, with a couple of submenus which allowed you to
change them. Working through the resolutions, I found 800╫600 was fine,
the 1024╫768 and 1280╫450 were usable for typing but the largest mode of
1600╫600 made 12 point text almost unreadable. Thinking about this soon
produced the answer Ö I stayed in the higher resolution mode but
magnified the Impression document to 200%.
7.10
I found it easier to work in terms of screen resolution measured in
pixels rather than the more difficult mode numbers. However, a click
with <menu> over the display manager icon brings up a writable icon in
which you can enter the old mode numbers.
7.10
The keyboard
7.10
You may have read that Acorn has gone for a Éstandardæ PC type keyboard.
What this means in practical terms is that Control and Caps lock on the
left hand side of the keyboard have swapped places, the ú sign has
shifted to the É3æ key and hash has moved next to the return key. One or
two of the other keys have moved but more annoying is that the words
ÉShiftæ ÉTabæ and ÉReturnæ are now missing from the keys. For regular
computer users, this will be no problem, but in the primary classroom
the missing words may make it more difficult for the pupils. The keys
themselves are slightly deeper but the same width as those on an A5000.
The feel of the keyboard is very much a matter of personal preference.
Initially, I preferred the A5000 keyboard but, after sustained use, the
Risc PC keyboard became second nature.
7.10
The slice
7.10
The main box has had much praise showered on it for its radical design,
materials, etc. Certainly, inserting an expansion board or second
processor is very easy and very fast. The modular design will make
expansion simple with one slice mounted on top of another. A lot of
thought has gone into the design of the slice from a technical point of
view but I am not convinced that the same amount of thought has gone
into how the slice is going to be used. The cover on the front of the
machine may have seemed like a good idea, and certainly if you have a
number of slices, covering up the empty bays makes good sense. The cover
itself is easy to open but I found difficult to close, as there is
little of the plastic to get hold of. (You certainly need good
fingernails. Ed.)
7.10
All this reminds me of those plastic screens that used to protect cash
machines at banks. Initially, all the machines had a screen which came
down when you had completed your transaction, but a few years ago a
couple of yobs armed with a tube of super glue managed to put over 300
cash machines out of order in one weekend by running a line of super
glue along the join. If the Risc PC is going to be used in education
then, sad as it is, Acorn does need to make them vandal proof.
7.10
Boot, fonts, system and scrap
7.10
The first thing you notice on opening the hard disc directory is the
absence of Fonts, System and Scrap directories. Instead, you have a
!Boot directory that uses the old System icon and which contains the
other three directories along with a boot file which you can customise
to your own requirements. Clicking on the !Boot icon brings up the
configure application which has moved here from Apps. Once you have
configured the machine, you can remove the configure program to floppy
disc and prevent any reconfiguration of your machine. You can also lock
the system up by using a password system. The trouble with this is that
a delete-power-up can undo all of this, so a link inside the computer
can be set to protect your machine It will then only reboot until the
link is changed again. The various techniques that are available to
protect your data will be welcome within education.
7.10
Your own apps
7.10
Apps has also moved and is no longer contained within the ROMs but is on
the hard disc. The icon still appears on the iconbar and a click will
bring up its contents. This means that you can customise your own
version of Apps. So if, like me, you use about three or four programs
most of the time, these can reside in Apps and be available at a single
click.
7.10
The hard disc also contains a number of Replay files and JPEG images
along with various games which used to come on the Apps disc. There is
also the ArtWorks viewer and ChangeFSI. The hard disc contains a
database of products which lists any known problems with software. To
check if an application runs with the Risc PC just drag the
applicationæs icon onto the database and up pops the relevant page with
all the details. The database will even generate a letter to the
supplier for an upgrade.
7.10
Draw, Paint and the rest
7.10
Draw has not only been given a revamp with the ÉNewLookæ icons, but also
benefits from the improved graphics display. The Style submenu now has
the colour picker as standard so that you can choose just about any
colour you want. This uses the three industry standards of RGB, CMYK or
HSV. Although there are few new features in Draw, the manual has a much
more detailed guide to Draw and a first-class tutorial.
7.10
Paint has the ÉNewLookæ but appears unchanged apart from the graphic
improvements. Calc has been replaced by SciCalc but Alarm remains
unchanged as far as I can see.
7.10
Other changes
7.10
There are numerous other changes from the Archimedes range and I will
detail a few of them here. You can use any outline font as the desktop
font, making the display much clearer. The Task Manager is almost
identical to the old manager but has an extra line detailing how much
space is taken by the Wimp sprite pool. The screen-saver actually
switches off the monitor rather than just blanking it, so if the monitor
has been off for a while, then after a very audible click, the screen
may take a few seconds to warm up.
7.10
The dramatic increase in the graphics display provided means that not
only do graphics come in many more colours but are also redrawn at about
twice the speed than on the A5000. The hard disc seems marginally faster
than that in the A5000 but the floppy is the same speed and is capable
of reading 1.6Mb discs.
7.10
Conclusions
7.10
RiscáPC is certainly the machine of the future, although it is not
radically better than the A5000 in performance terms at the moment. If
you are thinking of upgrading from a pre-A5000 machine, then the speed
and the graphics capability will certainly come as a revelation to you.
Also, the upgrade path will ensure that you donæt have an obsolete
machine in two years time. For anyone with an older machine, I should
get your order in now.
7.10
What about me, with my heavily modified A5000? Well, I shall be saving
my money, at the moment. Risc PC does not offer me any significant
advantages over the A5000 as I do very little graphics. Yet all this
will change when the PC processor becomes available in September and the
ARM700 later in the year, then I shall take the plunge.
7.10
Mind you, having just copied this article over from the Risc PC to the
A5000, I am realising that the speed of the hard disc inside the Risc PC
is actually rather faster than I first thought and the graphics on the
A5000 certainly look pretty tired Ö now where did I put my cheque
book... ?
7.10
On a final note, I was talking to a teacher the other day who was
delighted with the launch of Risc PC. As he put it, öAt long last, Acorn
has come up with the real successor to the good old BBC ÉBæ Ö a machine
that can be used not only by the reception class but also by a
University Professor.ò Now thatæs what I call praise!
7.10
Thanks to...
7.10
Much has been said in Archive about the ÉAcorn Spiritæ and certainly,
during the past week, I have experienced it. I had to ring a number of
software houses about getting versions of their software that would run
on the Risc PC. Because the time scale was so short, I didnæt have time
to send back my master discs and wait for the upgrades, so I rang them
and explained the situation and almost without exception, the upgrades
arrived on my door step the following day. My thanks must go to Brian
Kerslake at Topologika, Nick Wright at 3T Productions (Key Series), and
Sharon Fellows at Solent Computers (Oak Recorder) who all answered my
queries and problems. Certainly, these firms displayed the Acorn Spirit
to the full. Thanks again!ááA
7.10
First Impressions of the RiscáPC Ö 2
7.10
Gabriel Swords
7.10
You know how the excitement mounts when you get hold of the latest piece
of software or hardware Ö you quickly open the packaging so that you can
get the thing out and running. Well, when it comes to the Risc PC, you
can forget it. There is just no way you will ever get the packing open
quickly enough. My advice is to calmly put the kettle on, make yourself
a drink and study the box carefully! The packaging is so complicated
that Acorn have put three photographs (on the bottom of the box!) to
show you how to get into it. Itæs probably some kind of initiation test
to make sure youære worthy of owning the new machine. Fortunately,
opening the box is the most complicated thing you will have to do with
the Risc PC.
7.10
Once inside
7.10
Once inside the box, the first thing you notice about the Risc PC is how
light it is. Out has gone the utilitarian metal box which tries to cut
your fingers off when you attempt to open it (spot the A5000 owner! Ed.)
and in has come a neat, plastic Éthis-looks-like-a-real-computeræ
casing. Itæs curved at the front and has a pull down flap which hides
the disc drive and the spare slot for something optional like a CD or
additional hard drive.
7.10
The case itself is slightly higher and narrower than the A5000, so if,
like me, your A5000 tucks snugly under a custom made shelf, youæll have
to raise the shelf half an inch.
7.10
The keyboard is compact and well laid out. Itæs a standard PC design so
some of the keys are in different positions from the standard Acorn
keyboard. For example, the lefthand control key is where the caps lock
is on the Acorn one. The lefthand shift key, just above control, is half
the size of the Acorn key. Where the ú sign is on the Acorn keyboard
youæll find a double-sized delete key. It takes a while to get used to
some of these new positions but, after a couple of days, I found I was
getting around quite well. In fact, I prefer the larger sized delete key
because, when Iæm touch typing, I no longer hit the pound sign Ö
something I invariably do on the Acorn keyboard.
7.10
Setting up the system is simplicity itself. The Acorn screen has two
wires already in place and they plug straight into the back of the
computer. The keyboard and mouse also plug into the back. On the
keyboard you get a much longer wire so you can have the computer further
away from your working area. You can even mount the case on its side
pushing it right out of the way.
7.10
The screen (mine was an AKF60) is much better than the old Acorn ÉFisher
Priceæ screens of yester-year. The picture is much sharper, although it
still doesnæt go right to the edge. With the new screen configuration
dialogue box, itæs also easier to choose a screen mode and colour
combination Ö colours go from basic black and white to 16 million
colours, depending on how much VRAM you have (whatever VRAM is!). The
only annoying thing is that the screen takes several seconds to come
back to life once the screen blanker has been in operation.
7.10
All the plugs at the back are neatly spaced and clearly labelled. There
are also two slots for additional expansion cards at the back. Getting
in and out of the case is as easy as everyone says. It has a lid with
two catches on top, swivel them back, lift the lid and youære in. This
makes plugging in cards and chips really easy Ö in that sense, it is the
most accessible computer I have ever used.
7.10
My only criticism of the design is to say that, in the words of my son,
the on/off switch is pretty cheap looking!
7.10
Getting going
7.10
Being the excitable type, when I got the machine for my weekæs
evaluation, I quickly removed my A5000 and plugged the RiscáPC in its
place. I stupidly thought I would be able to get going straight away Ö
which I could, sort of!
7.10
So hereæs my second piece of advice. After youæve finished that drink I
mentioned earlier, you had better start writing to all your favourite
software companies because you might find your most treasured word
processor is now obsolete. If you run Impression, you will need to
upgrade to Style or Publisher. If you have a Laser Direct or Scanlight
Professional, youæll need an upgrade to their software. The same goes
for any old SCSI cards you might have tucked away in your old machine.
If you want to avoid this huge disappointment, it might be worth getting
hold of the upgrades before you actually get the machine. Alternatively,
if you do get the machine first, you will at least find a helpful
product directory included on the hard drive which will tell you if any
of your particular bits of software need upgrading Ö very useful!
7.10
Operating system
7.10
In operation, the RiscáPC is very similar to existing machines... which
isnæt surprising because the operating system is only a slightly altered
version of 3.11. This makes getting used to the machine very easy Ö at
least there are no new procedures to learn, and hopefully no new bugs to
cope with! The changes that have been made seem to be more cosmetic than
anything else. For example, the pinboard now has a choice of textured
backdrop, which can be chosen from the new screen configuration
dialogue. Buttons and such-like are in 3D, and when you open a file,
its icon opens up like an Éopen fileæ. Selecting and moving a group of
files looks a bit different too. Instead of the boring old dotted box
moving across the screen, you now get a parcel wrapped up like a present
Ö very cute!
7.10
All the system software is neatly collected together in a new-style
!Boot directory. This includes Fonts, Configure, Scrap, System, Choices
Ö including a new or old style boot-up sequence.
7.10
One major difference between the Risc PC and the older style machines is
that Paint, Draw and Edit are no longer in ROM but are included as disc-
based programs. They still open extremely quickly and work much the same
as before but if you run them all together, even without anything drawn,
painted or typed, they use up about 850Kb compared with 224Kb on RISCáOS
3.1. In the past, one of the selling points of Acorn machines was that
you got a reasonable painting package, WP and drawing program included
in ROM Ö this made them fast and always accessible because they were not
so reliant on the RAM. That is no longer the case. Mind you, with the
Risc PC itæs easier and cheaper to upgrade the RAM and there are no
floppy-disc-only versions for the computer, so itæs not so much of a
problem.
7.10
Speed
7.10
The Risc PC only runs at twice the speed of an A5000! At first I didnæt
think that was going to be very impressive. Having used it for a week, I
have now changed my mind. Take a simple operation like manipulating a
scanned image. I set the machine two simple tasks. Having scanned a
fairly complex image, I dropped the sprite into !Paint and filled it
with a mask Ö a very time-consuming task at the best of times! From
there it had to trace the sprite and turn it into a drawfile. The job
took about 20 minutes on my A5000 and, as you would expect, less than 10
minutes on the RiscáPC.
7.10
Although Éspeed isnæt everythingæ, in practice, being able to accomplish
a simple but time-consuming task in half the time actually makes me more
productive. It means that I can get on with my work and not have to wait
for the machine to finish. And when you realise that in a matter of
months, we shall have the ARM 700, and later the 800, it makes the
future look very fast... before you know it, youæll be able to finish
for the day even before youæve begun.
7.10
Conclusions
7.10
The two words that sum up this machine are Éeasyæ and Éneatæ. For once,
Acorn seem to have really thought about the design, layout and ease-of-
use of their computer. This is a computer I could do business with. Itæs
also a computer that looks like a business computer Ö one that would
proudly sit in any office or design studio. All thatæs needed now is the
right kind of software and a decent marketing strategy and this machine
could do wonders for Acornæs share of the market. On the software front,
things are beginning to look a little more promising; on the marketing
side, just using the term PC is a major change in peopleæs attitudes Ö
though I bet it has given some of the diehard Archimedes users
apoplexy!ááA
7.10
Pendown Etoiles
7.10
Phyllis Brighouse
7.10
Some time this year, the RSA plans to run a CLAIT examination in French
and I have been looking for a suitable wordprocessor to use. I think
this may be it. PenDown Etoiles is a French conversion of Longman
Logotronæs PenDown Plus program with some added features and changes.
All program instructions, menus, dialogue boxes, etc are in French.
7.10
The package comes with two manuals: a tutoræs manual in English and a
pupilæs manual in French, and the computer disc. A sheet of Teachersæ
Notes gives some initial guidance to the teacher.
7.10
Installation
7.10
The program installed to hard disc perfectly. To me, this is important
because, although I understand the need to protect software, that does
not stop me from loathing programs that compel me to run them from
floppy disc when I have paid for a hard disc.
7.10
There is provision for both RISC OS 2 and RISC OS 3 fonts, and a clear
Help file, with step by step instructions for network users.
7.10
Running the program
7.10
Double-clicking on the !Etoiles icon brings up a copyright message, in
French, and the Etoiles icon installs on the iconbar. Clicking <menu>
over this icon gives four options: Info, Recommencer, Configuer and
Terminer.
7.10
Clicking on Configuer brings up the PenDown Plus dialogue box, in
French, to allow the user to tailor the programæs main menu, and the
programæs save, autosave, print, screen and ruler.
7.10
Clicking on Recommencer brings up the editing window, with a ruler and a
strip of icon buttons for a new ruler, graphics, the insert/overwrite
mode, font selector and change font icons, text colour, underscore,
superscript and subscript, justification, line spacing (in desktop
publishing öpointsò rather than the typewriteræs ösingle/double spacingò
options), and a case change button (an option I always miss in a
wordprocessor when it is omitted).
7.10
Pointing and clicking at these buttons brings up French language
dialogue boxes. Point and click at what you want and make the change.
Pupils will find the meaning of the icons clear and easy to learn. The
system follows PenDown Plus and should be easily followed by PenDown
Plus users but, of course, there are changes.
7.10
Apart from the obvious change, that everything is in French, the other
main differences are the function keys. All eleven have been totally
reprogrammed as accent keys (F12 still brings up the star command line)
and a tear-off function key strip is provided on the Registration card.
Shift and function gives capital accented letters for those people who
still wish to use accents on capital letters. Control or Shift/Control
and the function keys do nothing at all.
7.10
This contrasts with PenDown Plus which provides a wide range of options
on the function keys. I have to admit to a prejudice here. I like my
function keys simple, with easy-to-read instructions. Inexperienced
pupils find mouse menus, and now point and click icon buttons, easier
and faster than trying to read function key strips printed about 3
points high. Dedicated PenDown Plus users may feel otherwise and may
wish to reprogram the function keys for Control/function and Shift/
Control/function using the Key Scripts directory located in the PenDown
Etoiles directory.
7.10
In the classroom
7.10
The pupilæs book provides a set of activities and the program disc
contains example files, and pupils quickly learn to use the basics of
the program. Activity 1 displays pictures and short texts about William
the Conqueror. Pupils overwrite the dashes with words selected from a
choice beneath the text. Pupils then spellcheck their French from the
French spellchecker provided. In other activities, pupils design
posters, and learn how to place graphics, choose fonts, format text,
save and print.
7.10
On the disc is a öMot Justeò file which contains prepared lists of
words, in French, and selecting a word from this list automatically
enters it into the document. This is a French word file from the very
useful PenDown Plus !WordList utility. If pupils who are given
assignments are using these wordlists, and then make a mistake, it will
clearly be a mistake in their French, not their keyboarding skills.
Pupils are also exposed to correct French, not repeated errors.
7.10
This utility is also useful in vocabulary work. Words can be grouped
together into subject areas, and the Mot Juste file supplies a list for
you, providing eighteen word groups. The !WordList utility is provided
with its facilities for creating word groups, anagrams and search and
sort, making this a valuable classroom addition to the French word
processor for teacher and pupil alike.
7.10
A Cloze utility is also provided to make Cloze files from text.
7.10
Manuals
7.10
I tend to be obsessed with manuals. Many are not well written or clear,
and clarifying points with software publishers by telephone is expensive
and therefore discouraged in schools. Longmanæs manuals are all well
written and models of clarity, and these manuals are no exception, with
one reservation.
7.10
The pupilæs French manual provides simple exercises, in simple French,
with clear graphical signals to pupils on what they are intended to do.
At the end of the manual is a complete translation of all dialogue boxes
and menus, with the French and the translations side by side. Any pupils
unsure what a menu or dialogue box is asking them to do, have a
straightforward reference section to look up the action. This is an
excellent manual.
7.10
The English language manual is the PenDown manual inside Etoiles covers.
It too is excellent and covers much more ground than the French manual.
Unfortunately, the changed function keys are not included, only the
original PenDown Plus ones. That one discrepancy throws the rest of the
manual into doubt.
7.10
The Contents page includes details about Chapters and Master Pages, Mail
Merging, and The Bin, which are not covered in the French manual. If you
are not a regular PenDown Plus user (I am not), you may become confused
about what is included from PenDown Plus to Etoiles, and what is not. In
the references at the back of the pupilæs book, some lines are greyed
out.
7.10
Longman informs me that everything in the English language manual works
for PenDown Etoiles with the exception of the Suggest option in the
spellchecker. PenDown Etoiles is a fully functioning desktop publisher,
but because English word patterns are so different to French ones, the
Suggest function does not work. Longman are reprinting the English
manual and have promised to look at the function keys when they do so.
7.10
Etoiles for CLAIT?
7.10
There is no doubt that when the French language CLAIT begins, this word
processor will allow pupils to complete the two hour assignment. The
programæs editing functions are more than adequate, with centre and
bold, search and replace, and cut and paste functions; its formatting is
particularly easy to use, so that pupils will have no difficulty editing
the ruler, or changing the justification and line spacing. With the
function keys providing accent keys, text entry is quick and easy, and
the spell-checker efficient.
7.10
PenDown Etoiles, Version 1.17 is available from Archive, price ú58.ááA
7.10
Wimp Programmeræs Toolkit
7.10
Hutch Curry
7.10
The Wimp Programmeræs Toolkit from Risc Developments contains sixteen
utility programs to assist anyone programming the RISC OS Wimp. Most of
the programs have general utility to any programmer, although a number
have particular relevance to Basic. Each of these programs can be run as
a stand-alone application by double-clicking the filer icon or,
alternatively, there is a front-end menu program called !!WimpKit from
which any of the other applications can be run. The programs included in
the toolkit are listed below with a brief description of the purpose of
each.
7.10
!WimpLib by Mark Moxon. This provides a useful library of Basic
functions and procedures for use when writing Wimp applications. It has
routines to perform many of the usual operations that Wimp programs have
to perform (like placing icons on the iconbar), so that a Wimp
application can be written more quickly. The library should enable the
aspiring Basic programmer to develop Wimp applications more easily.
7.10
!WimpAid (Version 1.1) by Graham Crow. WimpAid displays a variety of
information related to the position of the pointer on the desktop. As
you move the pointer, you can obtain continuously updated and detailed
information about pointer coordinates, the window the pointer is over
and the icon within that window.
7.10
!Tempi (Version 1.3) by Graham Crow. Tempi is a program to read window
template files and display their complete contents in a digestible
format.
7.10
!Spyglass (Version 1.01) by David Spencer. Spyglass is a very useful and
powerful application which allows you to Éspyæ on the memory locations
used by another application whilst that application is running.
7.10
!PollMask (Version 1.37) by Mike Whiteman. This is a small application
to generate the poll mask number required in R0 of the Wimp_Poll
routine. It is also an excellent example of the type of application
which can be developed with the Wimp Library.
7.10
!Pointer (Version 1.1) by Graham Crow. Pointer is an invaluable utility
for debugging template files. It allows you to locate missing icons,
either by giving Pointer the missing iconæs number, or by cycling
through all the icons in any window. It also continuously monitors the
mouse pointer and reports useful information about the windows and icons
beneath it, in a similar fashion to WimpAid.
7.10
!Messages (Version 2.0) by A Phillipson. This is a useful utility which
enables you to gain an insight into the Wimp messaging system.
Installing the program opens the Messages window, which displays the
reason codes returned to the program by Wimp_ Poll, together with a
description of each. These may be messages directed specifically to the
task itself; e.g. a request to open a window; or messages broadcast to
all tasks; for example, notification that a task has been started up or
closed down.
7.10
!MenuEd (Version 1.8) by Keith Moulding. MenuEd is designed to simplify
the process of creating menu structures for Wimp programs. The
application generates a data file containing the menu structures
required, which is given a filetype of &7FD or Menus. This file is then
loaded into your own application when it is run, and the menus are
accessed by using library routines which must be appended to your
program.
7.10
!LoadFile (Version 1.05) by Lee Calcraft. The LoadFile application is
designed to assist the debugging of Basic Wimp programs within the
desktop environment by allowing you to load a program directly from the
desktop by double-clicking on the file with <ctrl> pressed. This action
enters the Basic environment with the program already loaded.
7.10
!IBarShell (Version 1.3) by Ben Avison and Lee Calcraft. IBarShell is a
skeleton application which is designed to enable you to write simple
tasks that can operate with just an iconbar icon.
7.10
!FormEd (Version 1.26) Copyright Acorn Computers Ltd. Risc Developments
have apparently licensed the Acorn window template editor, FormEd, as
part of the toolkit. This venerable application allows you to define
windows on the screen and save the definitions in a file ready for
loading by your own application.
7.10
!Flags (Version 1.0) by Graham Crow. Writing Wimp applications, no
matter what language you use, invariably involves calculating the bits
for various flag settings. Amongst the more difficult to calculate are
the 32-bit flags used by RISC OS for icons, windows, menus and the Wimp
poll. The Flags application will dynamically calculate and display the
required flag value in either hex, decimal or binary, and this value can
be incorporated directly into your program code. Any display may also be
saved as a text file for printing or future reference.
7.10
!EasyWimp (Version 1.0) by Mike Ironmonger. EasyWimp is a very useful
shell program, written in Basic, which provides a ready-made Wimp
structure for applications which require just a single window containing
any number of icons. EasyWimp sets up the application on the iconbar and
handles opening and closing of the window. It also monitors user input
for keypresses and clicks over the window and its associated icons. All
that the user needs to add is the code to perform the necessary actions
when button clicks and keypresses are made.
7.10
!Debug (Version 0.5) by Lee Calcraft. When developing Wimp-based multi-
tasking applications for RISC OS, debugging can present quite a problem.
The Debug application provides one solution to this problem. It runs
from the iconbar and has a single window which displays ten numbered
lines of text about the program being tested. One or more short
procedures can be included in the task to allow it to send messages to
Debug. These can be called at any time within the task to display the
value of any variable, or any other program information, such as a
message that a particular procedure has been called. Procedures and
functions to communicate with Debug are provided for both Basic and C
programmers.
7.10
!BVar (Version 1.0) by Graham Crow. BVar is one of two applications
included in the Wimp Programmeræs Toolkit for analysing and debugging
Basic programs. It performs a similar function to the Basic command
LVAR, which lists the variables defined in a Basic program. BVAR also
identifies all the procedures and functions in the Basic program.
7.10
!BPF (Version 1.2) by Graham Crow. BPF is another application for
analysing and debugging Basic programs. It identifies all the procedures
and functions in a Basic program and lists them by name, together with
the line at which they are defined, their length, and the percentage
they represent of the total program. It also lists any procedures and
functions called but not defined, defined but not called, and most
importantly, defined more than once.
7.10
The programs are supplied on one disc and are accompanied with a well-
written and well-illustrated A5 manual of 54 pages.
7.10
Conclusions
7.10
In total, the Wimp Programmeræs Toolkit is good value for money for
anyone programming the Wimp on the Archimedes as some of the programs,
such as !Pointer and !Tempi, will be useful to even the most experienced
programmers. If you are a novice programmer, I think you will find the
majority of the applications extremely useful. My only real complaint is
with the supply of the Acorn template editor, !FormEd, instead of one of
the others now available such as !TemplEd or !Glazier. I personally
dislike !FormEd and think it makes Window creation much more onerous
than it should be.
7.10
Wimp Programmeræs Toolkit costs ú21.95 inc VAT through Beebug (ú17.95
for Risc User subscribers).ááA
7.10
Assembly Language Programming Ö 2
7.10
James Riden
7.10
Custom sprite plot
7.10
The screen display you see on your computer is simply an area of memory.
The screen base address (the lowest memory location) is the top left
corner. The memory location increases as you move right. When the end of
the row is reached, the next highest location is on the next row down on
the left again. In 256 colour modes, each colour corresponds to one
byte. What follows is a simple sprite plot Ö for more complex routines
see some of Bj°rn Fl°ttenæs articles (Archive 2.10 p23 and 3.1 p40). It
replaces the previous .plotsprite routine in the DirectAnim program from
last month. Remember that R12 holds the screen base address.
7.10
10 REM >Custom
7.10
1000.plotsprite
7.10
1010 ADD R0,R12,R3
7.10
1020 ADD R0,R0,R4,ASL#6
7.10
1030 ADD R0,R0,R4,ASL#8
7.10
1035 ADR R6,spriteaddr+56
7.10
1040 MOV R1,#16
7.10
1050 .yloop
7.10
1060 MOV R2,#16
7.10
1070 .xloop
7.10
1080 LDRB R5,[R6],#1
7.10
1090 STRB R5,[R0],#1
7.10
1100 SUBS R2,R2,#1
7.10
1110 BNE xloop
7.10
1120 ADD R0,R0,#(320-16)
7.10
1130 SUBS R1,R1,#1
7.10
1140 BNE yloop
7.10
1150 MOV PC,R14
7.10
1160.spriteaddr
7.10
1170 ]P%+=512
7.10
1180 [OPT pass
7.10
5005 SYS öOS_CLIò,öLoad mysprite ò+STR$~ spriteaddr
7.10
8030 EQUD 160+100*SIN(RAD(I%))
7.10
8040 EQUD 128+100*COS(RAD(I%))
7.10
As before, the file mysprite should contain a 16*16 pixel sprite with no
palette or mask. Check this with !Paint and then save first before
running the program. If any errors occur, check youæve typed everything
correctly.
7.10
A lot of changes have been made for this routine to work. Firstly, the
sprite is no longer referred to by name but instead is loaded into
memory at the address .spriteaddr. Sprites with no palette have a header
block and the routine compensates for this.
7.10
Also the lookup table is altered from the number of OS coordinates to
the number of pixels (in mode 13 one pixel is four OS units).
7.10
The routine is called with R12 equal to the screen base address and R3
and R4 the pixel offsets from the bottom right hand corner of the
screen. The x position is added to the screenbase and the result is put
into R0. Then R4*320 is added to R0 to give the absolute address to
start plotting. The ASL# statements can be simplified as follows:
7.10
R4 ASL#8 + R4 ASL#6 = R4<<8 + R4<<6 = R4*(2^8+2^6) = R4*(256+64) =
R4*320
7.10
We now know where to plot the sprite. Two registers are set up to be
used in the assembly version of a FOR NEXT loop. Most loops like this
count downwards because itæs one instruction shorter. Simply, a byte or
one pixel is loaded from the sprite and stored on the screen. The ,#1
after each statement means increment the pointer (the register in the
square brackets) after the operation. The screen pointer is incremented
by 320-16 to bring it along one whole row minus the 16 pixels of the
sprite which have been plotted. It should then be immediately below.
7.10
The SUBS instruction does the equivalent of a SUB and CMP. One register
is subtracted from the other as normal but when the S suffix is present,
the flags are set as if a CMP result,#0 has been performed immediately
afterwards. A lot of ARM programmers, having learned on small machines
such as the BBC, are incredibly careful to squeeze every last bit out of
the computer so they do it this way and save one instruction per loop.
Youæll know why when you try writing your own demos.
7.10
There is a faster way to plot sprites providing they are on word (four
byte) boundaries.
7.10
10 REM >WordPlot
7.10
1060 LDMIA R6!,{r7-r10 }
7.10
1070 STMIA R0,{r7-r10 }
7.10
1080 ADD R0,R0,#320
7.10
then type:
7.10
DELETE 1090,1120
7.10
to get rid of lines 1090 to 1120 inclusive.
7.10
Save and run this program. Can you see how jerky the movement is? This
type of plot is only useful for a few situations.
7.10
These lines alter the routine to use the much faster multiple load/store
instruction. The format is slightly different, with the pointer being
the first register and the list of registers being inside the curly
brackets. The exclamation mark after R6 means that it advances R6 by the
same number of words as there are registers. The IA stands for Increment
After, while I means store the registers going upwards in memory and A
means first store a register and then increment the pointer. The
opposites are D which means the pointer goes downwards in memory and B
which means move the pointer before storing a register.
7.10
Next month, Iæll start on scrolltexts. Keep experimenting and enjoy
yourselves!ááA
7.10
CardShop
7.10
Richard Rymarz
7.10
Children love making cards. Not only does it save them money, but they
gain a great deal of satisfaction from creating their own design,
colouring it in, making an envelope and even drawing a stamp. Then there
is the pleasure of handing over their finished cards. Parents, grannies,
brothers and sisters also appreciate the effort that a child has put
into something they have created themselves. In school and at home,
there are endless opportunities for children of all ages to make their
own cards.
7.10
With this in mind, Clares have produced a neat program that allows
children to do all those things. It is written by Mark Smith and cost
ú24.95 or ú23 through Archive.
7.10
The package
7.10
Cardshop comes on two discs Ö one contains the main program, a fonts
folder, some borders and some pictures. The second is a resource disc
containing lots more pictures. There is a well-written, 36-page, ring-
bound manual which explains how to initialise the discs, install the
program on hard disc (no problems), how to get started and so on. It is
clearly written with loads of illustrations. The program is fully RISC
OS compliant.
7.10
The program
7.10
Clicking <select> on the Cardshop icon brings up the main window. There
is a work area which, by default, shows the front of a card. Two banks
of large icons adorn the left side of the window and, at the top, is a
toolbox with five icons. The top four icons on the left correspond to
the four Émodesæ: card mode used to design the front of the card;
message mode used to write messages inside the card; envelope mode which
creates the envelope and an address; and finally stamp mode which can be
used to design a row of stamps which can then be cut out and stuck on
the envelope.
7.10
The lower four icons concern housekeeping allowing the user to: save a
card; reset boarder and picture lists; set directory paths for boarders
and pictures; and there is a dustbin to quit work in a particular mode
ready for a fresh start. User-defined directories of pictures can be
created and selected.
7.10
The tool box allows the user to select a font, write messages (up to 6
rows, each 35 characters long Ö easily sufficient), print a card, select
a border and select a picture. The tool box changes according to the
mode selected. All this is fairly intuitive and even quite young
children are soon be able to create a complete card.
7.10
Conclusions
7.10
This is not the place to discuss whether the computer should or should
not be used for a task that, traditionally, children have done with
paper and ink. Children should continue to be encouraged to draw
freehand. I will simply state that this is another way of producing an
effective result which, for some children, might be the only way they
achieve a neat and tidy piece of work. A word processor does the same
for those with poor handwriting. One very useful addition, partly
implemented, is a larger selection of monochrome drawings and some fonts
in outline so that the children could colour in their selections Ö not
too many of us have access to colour printers.
7.10
I could give a long wish list for improvements such as resizing of text
and pictures, overlapping of text, picture movement, etc but, to be
fair, such features belong to a DTP program. Maybe some will be
incorporated in future versions which would then broaden its appeal to
older children. However, for the asking price (the price of a standard
game) there is a lot of pleasure to be gained by children at home and at
school. Card Shop does what it sets out to do quite effectively and
simply.ááA
7.10
10 out of 10 Maths Ö Statistics
7.10
Richard Rymarz
7.10
Looking through the computer press, it is noticeable that 10 out of 10
Educational Systems Ö a subsidiary of game producers 4th Dimension Ö are
producing a whole variety of programs under the 10/10 banner. Not only
are their programs produced for all computer formats, they now include
areas such as dinosaurs, foreign languages and even passing the driving
test.
7.10
10/10 Maths Statistics is an extension of their series of games for
primary and secondary school children with the emphasis on fun and
arcade style presentation to aid learning. I have used 10/10 Maths and
English for some time with my group of ten and eleven year olds. The
programs have been quite successful offering one way of checking the
childrenæs progress through some of the National Curriculum Attainment
Targets.
7.10
The package
7.10
The program comes on two discs and can be installed onto hard disc Ö no
protection is used. An easy-to-use install program makes the whole thing
painless. There are two booklets: the Parent/Teacher guide which
introduces the program, relates it to the National Curriculum, explains
the grading and scoring system and unravels how to customise the games;
and the Playeræs guide which makes clear how to play the games and how
the Record of Achievement works. Everything is quite comprehensive but
requires a little effort to fully understand.
7.10
The games
7.10
Statistics has been produced two years later than the two other programs
that I use and I was interested to see how much further the design
element had progressed.
7.10
There are six games relating to 36 areas of Attainment Target 5 of the
National Curriculum Ö Data Handling. Each game has six grades which
relate to the ten levels of the N/C Ö so it is claimed that it can be
used from early primary school to secondary schools up to Year 10 (14
year olds). This is very ambitious and I have no way of knowing how
effective they are beyond primary school age.
7.10
I will give you a brief description of the aims of each game and the
gameplay involved:
7.10
Bomber Ö simple construction of block graphs, pictograms, bar line
graphs, frequency curves and histograms.
7.10
The game involves bombing and building block graphs. A helicopter or
plane flies across the screen getting lower and lower as the blocks are
altered. This I thought was quite difficult even at the simplest grade
and it took my children some time to master the skill Ö the fun slightly
tarnished by the amount of information needed to be held in the
childrenæs heads.
7.10
Survey Ö recording observations, grouping and ordering, tallying, using
relative frequency and estimating probability.
7.10
Grade 1 offers young children the chance to record the number of
creatures around a pond. There are then some simple questions to answer.
This was good, the children coping very well. The last grade involves
tallying dice throws and answering questions on frequency.
7.10
Cheers Ö recognising outcomes from random events, placing events in
likely order, understanding mean and mode, distinguishing between
estimates and probabilities and the addition of probabilities for
mutually exclusive events.
7.10
At Grade 1, Cheers is a simple Ésnakes and laddersæ game. A dice is
thrown and the children have to read a statement and then choose the
correct one from a list of possible answers. Once again this was quite
difficult and a great deal of thought was needed by the children.
7.10
The highest grade involves working out the probability of a combination
of chances.
7.10
Archer Ö sorting a set of objects, using words to identify chance,
calculation of the mean and range of data, calculation of probability of
a combined event and calculation of the probability of two events
happening.
7.10
Archer is an arcade-style game like Whack It (see below). The children
have to shoot an arrow through a coloured balloon that contains a word
belonging to a family. My children enjoyed this game but again some of
the vocabulary was too difficult for very young children.
7.10
The hardest grade was basically the same but involved some Ö to my mind
anyway Ö quite difficult calculation of probability.
7.10
Whack It Ö choosing criteria to classify objects, recognising events as
certain, uncertain or impossible, distinguishing between fair and
unfair, know that P(E)+P(not E) = 1 and P(not E) = 1-P(E) (whatever that
might mean) and calculate the mean.
7.10
This game has been seen before in other 10/10 programs and, at its
easiest level, involves the children reading groups such as Éelephant,
monkey, lion, tigeræ, then finding the word Éanimalsæ somewhere in the
main screen and Éwhackingæ it with a hammer. My main concern is that
some of the vocabulary is too difficult for very young children.
7.10
The highest grade involves using a calculator to discover the Émeanæ
from a set of frequencies.
7.10
Sniper Ö interpreting block graphs, pictograms, pie charts, network
diagrams, frequency tables and histograms.
7.10
Sniper has also been seen before. Grade 1 involves simple interpretation
of block graphs. A moving target containing the answer to a question has
to be Éshotæ. Again, some of the language is quite difficult.
7.10
Grade 6 involves careful reading of the question and interpretation of
the graph before attempting an answer.
7.10
Conclusions
7.10
I have mixed feelings about this group of programs. The presentation is
much slicker than previous offerings. It offers more than just drill and
practice since some heavy thinking is required to solve some of the
puzzles. The games are enjoyed by the children, particularly those
styled along arcade lines. However, there are some careful
considerations needed:
7.10
1. How will it be integrated in the classroom?
7.10
2. How are questions of language overcome, especially for younger
children or slow learners?
7.10
3. What exactly does it do for the child and how is it related to his/
her mathematical development?
7.10
Please donæt be too discouraged from buying and using the program at
home (especially for primary school age children Ö I find it hard to
imagine teenagers playing it at home) or school. There does seem to be
an awful lot in the program that could lead to useful work away from the
computer. As usual with most Éeducationalæ software, an imaginative
teacher or parent will derive much from it.
7.10
Maths-Statistics costs ú25.95 inclusive from 4th Dimension or ú24
through Archive and represents good value for money.
7.10
Finally, there is a bonus. Another game called ÉWord Fitæ is included.
What this has to do with the main suite of programs, I do not know.
Perhaps it was Ésuperfluousæ to requirements or not good enough to be
included in a full suite of English programs. Anyway, it is there and is
a spelling game. Unfortunately, I donæt think it is particularly
brilliant, the idea being to fill in a grid with words in a crossword-
type pattern. The words across the grades are user-definable but playing
the game is quite cumbersome. Never-the-less it is there if you can find
a use for it.ááA
7.10
Observess Ö An Expert System Shell
7.10
Les May
7.10
What is an expert system?
7.10
Well, the following story will help to illustrate it for us... Some
years ago a friend of mine built an audio compressor/expander unit for
his home studio. So far as one could tell, it was built exactly to the
design given in the audio magazine, but it refused to work. After a few
hours spent in checking the circuit, he brought it to my house and asked
if I would take a look at it. With my scanty knowledge of analogue
electronics, I checked for dry joints, wrong component values and so on.
Having found nothing wrong, out came a test meter. Starting with the +ve
and Öve supply lines and the power pins of the ICs, the voltages at
different points in the circuit were checked, before moving on to do the
same test at the various transistors.
7.10
After about ten minutes work, it seemed that the problem probably lay
with three transistors. One faulty new transistor I could understand,
but not three! As I did not have replacements to hand, I decided to look
in my transistor equivalents book to check on possible substitutes. It
was at this point I realised what the problem was. It appeared that the
transistors giving the trouble were manufactured with two different lead
configurations but with the same encapsulation! After resoldering them
with the leads correctly oriented, the circuit worked as described.
7.10
Diagnostic situations like this are by no means rare. The problem domain
is narrowly defined, in this case, analogue electronics, and there is a
clear goal Ö discovering the fault. Applying the tests is equivalent to
asking a series of questions and the results are equivalent to
Éanswersæ. Knowledge of which Équestionsæ to ask and what can be
inferred from the various Éanswersæ is where the skill lies. If the
skill is difficult to acquire because the number of possible questions
is very large and interpreting the answers requires the exercise of
judgement, we call the people Éexpertsæ.
7.10
Initially, attempts to automate these procedures lead to the development
of specialised computer programs in which the knowledge, the question
and answer routines and the process of making inferences from the
answers were intermingled. This is equivalent to writing a new
wordprocessor program to operate on every new piece of text! Not
surprisingly, these were superseded by programs which separate the
questions and answers Ö the knowledge base Ö from the mechanism which
asks the questions and processes the answers Ö the inference engine.
This type of generic program is usually called an Éexpert systemæ shell
because the same program allows the building and using of any number of
different expert systems. The inference engine must also be able to
explain to the user its reasoning.
7.10
Although the term Éexpert systemæ was the first to be coined, today, the
term knowledge-based system (KBS) is often used. A KBS may be formally
defined as, Éa computer-based system which supports or performs
automatically, a cognitive task in a narrow problem domain which is
usually only carried out by human expertsæ.
7.10
Enter Observess
7.10
Observess from Rebecca Shalfield is a fully multitasking expert system
shell for RISC OS computers. It allows developers to construct and test
their own KBSs in a knowledge domain of their choice, and to distribute
them along with a run-time edition upon which no royalties are payable.
Up to a thousand rules with an IF... THEN... structure are allowed, each
with up to three conditions which are ANDed together. OR is not
supported but a method of avoiding this limitation is explained in the
manual as is the way of dealing with more than three conditions. Rules
can be Displayed, Added, Amended, Deleted, Swapped or Reset. Most of
these are self-explanatory. Swap changes the order in which the rules
are dealt with during a consultation session. Known conditions or
conclusions are called facts and up to a hundred of these are allowed.
Because both rules and facts may be indicative rather than diagnostic of
a particular conclusion, both can be assigned percentage certainty
factors.
7.10
Observess is a complex program designed to simplify the task of making
use of some quite sophisticated ideas. It succeeds in doing this, but
whether it is successful enough will depend on the motivation of the end
user of the knowledge base. The explanation facility is, perhaps
inevitably, rather primitive. A reasonably experienced computer user
would have no difficulty but a reluctant user would probably expect to
find a much more detailed and verbose explanation.
7.10
Documentation
7.10
Initially, I found myself judging Observess by the quality of the
supplied knowledge bases, which would be quite wrong. Having said that,
I did find them rather poor, even pointless. Only eight lines of the
twenty page manual are devoted to advice on how to construct a knowledge
base. It would be a real asset to have a couple of extra pages devoted
to building a knowledge base from scratch Ö it could use one of those
supplied as an example.
7.10
The manual is a mixture of clear Édo thisæ instructions and occasional
obscure sentences. Topics are dealt with as a series of numbered
sections and the index refers to a section number rather than a page.
This will make the addition of new topics a simple task. Unfortunately,
even with spacing between topics there are 45 lines per page and more
than a hundred characters to a line. In other words it is quite
difficult to read! The manual is very honest about things that are
missing from the program or might be done better. It also indicates what
will be added in later versions.
7.10
Niggles
7.10
Apart from the manual my other reservations include a number of minor
niggles like the choice of colours for the windows Ö one is a sickly
orange, and the layout of the ÉAsk questionæ window. Changing a rule is
done via the Amend window and the user has to remember to click on the
OK icon to ensure that the rule is amended. It would be nice if the
program detected a text change and made the rule change automatically
when the rule number is incremented or decremented. When the expert
system cannot provide a recommendation, the user is informed of this
through an error window because the condition is treated as an error. It
isnæt an error. The problem arises from an attempt to simplify the
procedure responsible for supplying messages.
7.10
Feedback from the programmer
7.10
Users are encouraged to contact the author with queries, comments and
recommendations. I did this and got a quick response to the points I
raised. This will probably lead to a succession of minor changes in the
program as the author tweaks it in the light of feedback from users. A
number of changes are already being made to the next version being
prepared for release, version 1.11. Perhaps the necessary feedback
should have been obtained before it was released onto the market.
7.10
One of the points raised with the author was that one menu suggests that
it is possible to launch a consultation session using a function key.
Even after getting a reply to a query about this, I still could not get
it to work as it should. It does work, but not consistently. I also
found that when I wanted to drop the program from the iconbar, I kept
being told that I had not saved the knowledge base, even though I had
not modified it.
7.10
News of upgrades, answers to queries and hints on using the program are
promised in The Observess Chronicle which came with update 1.09.
7.10
Great potential
7.10
If this were a preview of an as yet unreleased program, my feelings
would be entirely positive, because it has a great deal of potential.
Because itæs a review of a program that has already been released, I
have reported the problems I encountered.
7.10
In spite of the Érough edgesæ which the Observess undoubtedly has, it
would be good value for money to anyone who wants to develop an expert
system to sell or distribute to others. If you have a use for it, you
will put up with the problems. It is not a toy, it is a real expert
system shell and you can freely distribute the run time version with
your knowledge base. I used it to make a simple expert system to help
with the identification of common gases such as might be encountered by
children in the lower secondary school. Another use which comes to mind
is building an adviser about which statistical test is most appropriate.
7.10
You may have noticed that it is very unlikely that an analogue
electronics expert system would have been able to diagnose the ultimate
cause of my problem with the transistors Ö which is good news for we
humans! The program was tested on an A5000 with 4Mb of RAM and hard
disc.
7.10
The developeræs version of the Observess expert system shell, complete
with the royalty-free run-time version, is available from Rebecca
Shalfield, 51 Swallowfield Road, Charlton, London, SE7 7NT, price
ú20.ááA
7.10
Technical Clipart Collection
7.10
Mike Tomkinson
7.10
The problem with clipart is that you never have enough of it. Perhaps
that sentence should read Égood clipartæ as there is certainly enough
poor quality material around. It must be said that some of the PD houses
are the worst offenders. Some are guilty of supplying clipart
öcollectionsò which might charitably best be described as of variable
quality. The argument that it is cheap does not excuse the fact that
some of it consists of no more than poorly scanned images and even
worse, conversions of PC clips.
7.10
Good clipart
7.10
It is always good to see clipart which has a quality look to it. This
certainly applies to the Technical Clipart Collection from PTW Software.
7.10
The disc contains a library of Chemistry apparatus and an electronic
circuit drawing system which can be combined with a PCB symbol library
to produce printed circuit diagrams which can also include ICs.
7.10
PCB artwork
7.10
The latter feature is really only an option on drawing packages which
have the ability to layer or overlay views and which have a library
facility. The excellent PD DrawPlus or its most commercial and fully-
featured development, Vector from 4Mation, are highly recommended. Some
of the more specialised PCB drafting clipart is supplied in DrawPlus
format for this reason. Draw is simply not up to this task.
7.10
Given the low cost of this clipart collection (ú7.50 inclusive) it could
be argued that savings are likely to be achieved when comparing it to
specialised PCB drafting software. A copy of the Technical Clipart
Collection plus Vector represents excellent value for money. No-one is
suggesting that it replaces professional standard PCB design software
but, for occasional use, it is more than adequate.
7.10
The clipart is supplied with an A5-sized 8-page manual which gives users
all the help they are likely to need to produce worthwhile results.
However, it does not replace the Vector manual and the person who has
not got to grips with libraries and layers would need to consult the
appropriate sections.
7.10
The supplied documentation does assume that the user has the ability to
use Draw and DrawPlus. Perhaps a worked example using layers and
libraries would be useful for those new to packages other than Draw.
DrawPlus is certainly not that different from Draw but a learning curve
would certainly exist for some users. However, it is good to see clipart
supplied with printed manuals rather than the usual scant help file on
disc (if you are lucky).
7.10
Perhaps others would argue that this clipart fills a niche in the market
and it certainly has the redeeming features of being high quality and
inexpensive at the ridiculously low price of ú7.50 inclusive. The price
represents particularly good value for schools as it also includes a
site licence.
7.10
Chemistry apparatus
7.10
The Chemistry apparatus library is certainly the most accessible part of
the collection. It is very easy to produce highly acceptable worksheets
and examination papers, by using it in combination with Draw and/or any
DTP package. It should certainly be of use to all teachers of Chemistry
and would be a worthwhile addition to the hard discs of all Science
Department Archimedes and RiscáPCs.
7.10
Hobbyists and schools with electronics departments and would also find
the circuit and PCB collections useful but they will need DrawPlus or
Vector. My only slight criticism is that the individual pieces of
Chemistry apparatus and the flasks and tubes are not included as a
Vector library file.ááA
7.10
Phases α la Nouveau
7.10
Phyllis Brighouse
7.10
I teach junior and senior pupils in an Independent school. We teach
French starting from Year 6, and RSA CLAIT, and are looking for a French
word processor to teach the new French CLAIT.
7.10
The program
7.10
Phases α la Franτais, Version 1.08, is a full French language version of
NW SEMERCæs wordprocessor and desktop publisher Phases 3, with the
wordbank facility found in the Full Phases program added. This is a
second screen which can be used as a substitute for an overlay keyboard.
7.10
You can create pages of text, change the font size and font type, import
graphics, and import Cloze texts created in Full Phase. The text size is
especially easy to use; six size options are given, with the size of the
final text displayed in the size it will appear on the screen and in
print. Point and click at the size wanted. There is also a notepad. Text
can be centred, or left or right justified, and rearranged into two
columns, newspaper style. You can remove a graphic or add new graphics
to a page as required.
7.10
With Phases α la Franτais, all the menus and instructions are presented
in French. Save becomes Sauvegarder, for instance. It should be noted
that somebody seems to have missed the screen page numbers; these are
still in English as page one, page two, etc. I am sure NW SEMERC will
change this in the next version.
7.10
Documentation
7.10
This consists of the English language version of the Phases 3 manual
with a French language supplement. As I think in English when working,
this did not worry me. The book is small, well laid out, and ring bound,
so it sits neatly beside you and does not get in the way. The supplement
I saw was not as detailed as it could be in explaining how to use the
wordbank, but SEMERC informs me that this will be looked at.
7.10
Installing the program
7.10
We use A3000s with a hard disc and RISC OS 2, and a BJ200 printer. To
install the program, you simply create a suitable directory on the hard
disc, display the contents of the floppy disc in their window, and drag
each file across.
7.10
I already use Phases 2 and run fonts from my hard disc font manager. The
only font file supplied which I did not have was Cloze. I added it to my
hard disc font directory and everything worked perfectly.
7.10
Running the program
7.10
With RISC OS 2, you have to install your printer driver first, so that
the program can set up correctly, or it does not run. A large clear
notice inside the manual front cover instructs you to do this.
7.10
Double click on the font manager, open the Phases directory and double
click on the !Phases 3 icon. It appears on the iconbar. Clicking <menu>
over this icon gives you your mouse menus Ö all in French.
7.10
The French language supplement instructs you to open the directory
called Work containing a file called banque_mot (the wordbank file) and
load it to the Phase α la Franτais icon on the iconbar. You can either
double-click on the directory icon, or else drag it to the iconbar. Two
screens appear: a blue one (the wordbank) and a writing screen. Each
screen is separate and you can drag them apart, enlarge or reduce them
individually, push one or the other to the back, or remove one
completely.
7.10
Next you are instructed to drag a text file called Accents onto the blue
area. I did so, and accented French characters appeared on the blue
wordbank. You are now instructed to click on the white writing area and
write something in French. When you need an accented character, the
instructions stated, click on the character in the wordbank and it will
be entered into your writing at the caret position.
7.10
I tried to write öBonjour DΘniseò but what I got was öBonjour DΘ niseò.
The wordbank is literally that Ö a wordbank Ö and a space is
automatically inserted after each accent clicked on. NW SEMERC informed
me that a separate accent generator was being prepared, rather like
!Chars, but neater.
7.10
An alternative way of entering text is to click <menu> over the iconbar
and select a New Screen Ö nouvel Θcran. You should not do this if you
plan to use the wordbank; when the file is loaded to the icon on the
iconbar, it deletes any new screen you have created, and the work on it.
7.10
Creating banque mots files
7.10
Creating an Edit file with banque_mot was very simple. I dragged the
banque_mots file to the icon on the iconbar so that the white writing
area and the blue wordbank area appeared, and loaded the text file
Accents into the wordbank. I deleted the writing window and replaced it
with an Edit window instead and clicked on the accents in the wordbank
to transfer them to Edit whenever I needed an accent. This was easier
than using !Chars, even if I did have to keep removing the spaces. You
do have to remember to end each Edit file with a return, or you will
lose the last letter entered. To merge two separate files, create a new
Edit file and drag the two files into it.
7.10
None of this was in either the manual or the French language supplement
supplied, but the program is so intuitive to use that I had no
difficulty working it out for myself, and NW SEMERC assure me they are
looking at improving the supplement.
7.10
Conclusion
7.10
As an English language word processor and desktop publisher, Phases 3 is
superbly easy to use and, apart from the one slip up with the page
numbering, an excellent conversion has been made to the French language.
7.10
It is not suitable for French RSA CLAIT simply because of the time
constraint of 2 hours for the examination. It is, however, an excellent
French language word processor for everyone else, especially people who
already use Phases 3. NW SEMERC can supply a range of graphics very
cheaply to load into the program, and also supplies a good database
program called Optima which could be used as an electronic book, and
Edit files of French text pasted into it.
7.10
Phases α la Franτais, Version 1.08 costs ú24 (+ú3 p&p) +VAT from NW
SEMERC.ááA
7.10
Materials, Components and Techniques
7.10
George Barnett
7.10
Anglia Television Educationæs range of curriculum datafiles for its KEY
data-handling system is increased by this Key Plus database package
ÉMaterials, Components and Techniques.æ
7.10
Key Plus is a powerful database program designed to meet the data-
handling requirements of the National Curriculum. Key Plus Version 2.5
or above is required (Version 3 is now available). These versions would
have been supplied as upgrades to any schools registering for Technical
Support at a cost of ú45. Otherwise an individual cost of ú60 or a site
licence ranging from ú65 to ú180 would be required.
7.10
The disc contains five datafiles designed to help students in the 11-16
year age group make choices during the Édesign and makeæ process.
Information is given on materials. The other datafiles on tools,
components and joining techniques contain over 70 graphics which help
students illustrate their work. These graphics can be exported using
Draw. There are datafiles on 65 different types of materials, 26
components, 37 tools, 17 methods of joining and a glossary of 48 terms
used in the field of plastics and polymers.
7.10
The datafile ÉMaterialæ includes a wide range of information on common
materials and the names of some of the materials (particularly the
plastics) include several alternatives in a single record. The datafiles
ÉComponentæ, ÉToolsæ and ÉJoiningæ each have a graphic field to present
pupils with a pictorial representation of the record.
7.10
A sixteen-page comprehensive booklet is provided, which is designed
specifically for classroom use. This includes information which will
encourage pupils to ask a variety of questions when considering the
materials, components and techniques used in project work. It also
includes information about the datafiles and their use. There are
several study sheets including ÉThe right tool for the jobæ, ÉMaterial
propertiesæ, ÉChoosing metalsæ, Choosing plastics, ÉChoosing timberæ,
and a sheet on adhesives.
7.10
The study sheet ÉMeeting the needæ gives useful suggestions under the
headings Design and Make, Identify an area of need, Produce a design
brief, Investigate the various possibilities, Decide on the best
solution, Make the product, and Test and modify it. The study sheet ÉThe
right tool for the jobæ helps in picking tools Ö tools for holding and
tools for safety.
7.10
The running of the program follows the usual Key Plus format of loading
Key Plus then dragging the required datafiles onto the icon on the
iconbar. The files can then be searched, sorted etc.
7.10
All sheets may be freely photocopied by the purchasing school.
7.10
This is highly recommended and would be a great help for any teacher
involved in Design and Technology but remember Materials, Components and
Techniques can only be used with Key Plus.
7.10
Materials, Components and Techniques is available from SCA (Anglia
Television) at ú22 +VAT.ááA
7.10
MouseTrap
7.10
Dave Walsh
7.10
MouseTrap is a small but useful utility, from Design Concept, to control
the presses of mouse buttons. Mousetrap can make the friendly rodent
even more accommodating by ignoring stray presses made by young,
disabled or inexperienced users.
7.10
It is able to turn off select, menu and adjust buttons in any
combination, as well as making the mouse left-handed by swopping
<adjust> and <select>. It can even make all the buttons act as <select>
if you fancy a one button mouse!
7.10
One of the most promising features is the ability to ölatchò on with
<select> rather than having to hold it down continuously. A welcome
addition to the program might be an alterable timespan to achieve the
latch though, as some users will find a full second static too
difficult. A further helpful aid would be an audible öbeepò once the
mouse is in ölatchedò operation. The feature works within each of the
paint programs that I tried allowing young users the pleasure of
painting without worrying about being able to keep the button down AND
move the mouse!
7.10
As the program arrived for review in a non-documented state, it was
difficult to comment on the manual. Even so, itæs the sort of program
that should be largely intuitive and it was therefore a little
surprising that I managed to lock myself out of the options on numerous
occasions and had to revert to killing it through the task manager.
7.10
Mousetrap uses 128Kb as well as having a module residing in the module
area. Quitting from the application on the iconbar makes the trapping
function cease so you are forced into using the full memory version.
7.10
With a few minor modifications, this program could be ideal for a range
of users who have specific difficulties operating the mouse.ááA
7.10
Lemmings 2 Ö The Tribes
7.10
Dave Floyd
7.10
Lemmings 2, not surprisingly the sequel to Lemmings, has at last made
its journey from other formats to the Archimedes courtesy of Krisalis.
The package comprises four discs, requires a minimum of 2Mb of memory
and is available for ú29.95 or ú28 through Archive.
7.10
Background
7.10
There can be few people within the computer fraternity who have not at
least heard of Lemmings. In this masterpiece amongst puzzle games, the
idea is to help a group of Lemmings through a plethora of screens
containing puzzles which get gradually more difficult as the game
progresses. For my taste, the only real drawback of the original was
that some of the screens relied too much on fast reactions to complete
them rather than puzzling skills. Lemmings 2 Ö The Tribes has no such
screens to spoil the enjoyment, which will come as good news to many.
7.10
Since the original, the lemmings have settled on Lemming Island and have
lived prosperous and fruitful lives as members of separate tribes,
thanks to a talisman of which each of the twelve tribes holds a piece.
All is not well, however and, as foretold in the prophecy, a great
darkness is coming and they must escape the island. Preparations have
been made in the centre of the island where an ark has been constructed
to spirit the lemmings away to safety. Your objective, is to guide each
tribe of lemmings from their village to the ark so that the twelve
pieces of talisman may once again be joined together to give the
lemmings the power to escape their fate.
7.10
Each tribe of lemmings has cultivated its own distinct culture and
personality and they have learned many new skills, fifty-two in all,
although only a maximum of eight are available for use at any one time.
The graphics are small but detailed, as before, and a major improvement
on the original is the scrolling of the screen which can now be moved in
all directions, allowing larger and more devious screens. Owners of
multisync and VGA monitors are also catered for with improved graphics
if the game is loaded in mode 27, while those who have 4Mb machines will
be rewarded with better quality sound. Finally, the function keys can
now be used as an alternative to the mouse for selecting skills which
comes in very useful at time critical moments.
7.10
The game
7.10
In order to complete the game, all pieces of the talisman must reach the
centre of the island. To achieve this, you must help each tribe through
ten separate levels. Each tribe starts the game with sixty members and
you must try to get as many of those sixty as you can through each
level. If you succeed in guiding them all through, you have sixty on the
next level, whereas if you only manage to save, say, ten lemmings, you
have the option of trying to do better or attempting the remaining
levels with your ten lemmings. The colour of your talisman piece changes
to reflect how well you have done. If all lemmings are successfully
saved, it is gold; a less than perfect go will be rewarded with a
silver, while if most of your tribe have been left behind or died in the
attempt, you will only have a bronze piece. How well you have succeeded
is denoted by means of a medal awarded at the end of each level. This
works well as a way of extending the life of the game, because even if
you complete all the levels in a couple of weeks of playing, it will
take far longer before you devise methods by which your completed
talisman is solid gold.
7.10
There are no passwords in Lemmings 2. Instead, you have the facility to
save your game position onto a blank disc, or your hard disc if you have
installed the game. Each different tribeæs trek can be attempted in any
order and it is not necessary to complete all ten levels before moving
to a different part of the island and another tribe. This means that if
you get stuck on a particular problem, you can move on to another tribe,
coming back to attempt any unsolved parts later. You can also move back
through previously solved levels to attempt to improve your lemming
count. The progress of each tribe is shown on the map of Lemming Island
by the pieces of talisman which move inwards corresponding to the
progress made in each area.
7.10
The puzzles themselves are graded well and get increasingly difficult as
you progress through each of the ten levels for the twelve tribes.
Experimentation and a bit of lateral thinking can be rewarded when you
feel that there is no way possible to complete a screen. Like a good
adventure game, a real sense of achievement is felt when a problem is
solved and a level completed after hours of believing that it was
impossible.
7.10
On reaching the end of a screen, each tribe has its own way of
finishing. One tribe bows down to you before disappearing while the
Highland tribe, whose finishing block is a telephone box, actually
staggers past before falling backwards into it in a drunken stupor.
Stereotypical and not overly politically correct perhaps, but it brought
a smile to my face, and it is attention to small details such as this
which helps to make Lemmings 2 such a good game.
7.10
Conclusion
7.10
Lemmings 2 is one of those rare phenomena. Playable, highly addictive
and with no obvious faults or down sides at all throughout its total of
120 levels. The game design is a gem and the conversion has been carried
out with all the skill and care we have come to expect from Krisalis. If
you only have 1Mb of memory and have not been able to justify upgrading,
this game is reason enough.ááA
7.10
Cars Ö Maths in Motion
7.10
George Barnett
7.10
ÉCars Maths in Motionæ is simulation program (not a game) that is based
on a season of Formula 1 Grand Prix motor racing. It is an educational
program which covers an understanding of percentages, multiplication,
division, simple geometry, scale drawing, modelling, probability,
ratios, strategy and logical thinking. The program is suited to
individuals or group work and cars have to be adjusted to compete on the
chosen circuit. There are many available circuits and teams have to make
decisions based on a combination of information presented to them and
their own skills in measuring, estimation and calculation.
7.10
The teams compete in an attempt to achieve the fastest practice lap time
to obtain the pole position at the start of the race. The task then is
to develop a winning strategy! Fuel loading, tyre types, pit stops and
weather forecasts will all come into play when making decisions.
7.10
Tutorial
7.10
There is an excellent tutorial that pupils may use on the Silverstone
racetrack. There are six files set up on the ÉTeamsæ directory:
ÉStewards Informationæ showing the race venue, distance, and weather
information (dry weather requires fast dry tyres), ÉDrivers Temperamentæ
(what sort of driver are you?), ÉWorkshop Adjustmentsæ, ÉPit Team
Briefingæ, ÉRace Planningæ and ÉGrid Positionæ. The information must
then be saved and the race started.
7.10
The climax (or anti-climax depending on your expectations) is the race
itself. It is at this point that the teams find out whether their
strategies were successful or not. There is no roar of engines though
and no movement of cars, only records of times or incidents. All the
pupils who tried this program were disappointed at this stage. Flying
simulations have aeroplanes and, of course, some action was expected.
However, by persevering, most pupils became interested in the
Silverstone Report which appears at the end of the race, e.g. Weather,
warm and dry. Lap 1, Ian overtakes Wendy. Lap 2, Ian spins car but
recovers. Lap 3 Ian crashes car. Finally Kevin wins at an average speed
of 205 km/h. This, of course, shows only brief excerpts of the report
but it was of great interest to the pupils taking part.
7.10
Running the program
7.10
The program disc has to be initialised but then the three discs may be
loaded onto a hard disc. By clicking on the !Cars icon, the icon appears
on the iconbar and if you do not wish to study the well-presented
manual, you can simply follow the tutorial.
7.10
Creating a race scenario
7.10
Before being able to set up a race, a circuit has to be selected from
the 21 supplied and provision has been made for a degree of security for
teachers, to prevent pupils tampering with the Setup. Clicking <menu> on
the Cars icon produces, amongst others, ÉStart Raceæ and the Setup Page.
This has a sub-menu showing Start Time, Lap Details, Circuit Details,
Weather Forecast and Save Setup. The Setup has to be saved before the
race can be run.
7.10
In setting up the car, the circuit plans have to be studied. There are
six types of features to be considered: short, medium and long
straights, tight, medium and long bends. Each feature type is defined on
every Circuit Plan, creating different mathematical situations. The
angles have to be measured (by a protractor). The race distance and safe
speed have to be calculated, as has the required quantity of fuel, and
the necessary pit stop times have to be forecast. There are helpful tips
for the classroom covering these features printed in the manual, as well
as Travel and History suggestions. Listed too, in Appendix 3, is
program-related classwork in Maths, Science, Art, Social Skills, Life
Skills, Language, Design and Technology and car problems.
7.10
As the race progresses, incident reports appear on the screen (as
mentioned in the tutorial above) and if a ÉJournalistæ option is set,
the race is paused to allow time for notes to be taken. There are
facilities to construct your own circuit.
7.10
Conclusion
7.10
The 23-page manual, 21 circuits and three discs are housed in a strong
box and I consider that this is a worthwhile educational program,
reasonably priced at ú49.95 +VAT from Cambridgeshire Software House.ááA
7.10
Vanguard Graphics Ö Cowboys and Indians
7.10
George Barnett
7.10
This consists of over a hundred examples of Cowboys and Indians coloured
clipart that can be used in cartoons or whole comic books. No drawing
ability is required Ö just a vivid imagination and a lot of time. A
ÉWild Westæ font is also included.
7.10
There are two filled discs of drawfiles and the twenty wild west scenes
that can be ungrouped so that individual parts can be used separately.
There are Éeffectsæ available, such as POW! WHOOSH! ZOOM and various
shaped speaking bubbles into which Écowboy talkæ can be typed.
7.10
The ten-page pamphlet that comes with it shows each item of clipart and
gives suggestions for creative writing, colouring books and National
Curriculum areas.
7.10
I can thorougly recommend this clipart library Ö at ú15 + ú2 p&p (thatæs
less than 17p a picture!) from Matt Black, itæs worth every penny.ááA
7.10
Impression Style Resource Disc
7.10
Gabriel Swords
7.10
DEC_dATA have produced a useful disc of clipart and borders. There are
six files on the disc including... borders, masks, decorative and office
clipart, chess pieces, and a UK map.
7.10
The clipart isnæt the best part of the disc Ö in fact, among the last
four files, youæll only find 26 drawfiles, and thirteen of those are
chess pieces.
7.10
The borders on the other hand are much more useful. You can choose from
arrows, round and square corners, celebrations, fancy, jumbo, plain and
top borders Ö 110 in all. Even amongst the plain borders, youæll find
all the lines you always meant to create but never got around to doing Ö
dotted, 2mm, 5mm, ╜pt etc.
7.10
In with the celebration and fancy border files, youæll find, among other
things, a football, a collection flowers, pins, screws, taped corners, a
Christmas tree, holly, balloons, a horseshoe, a fish and a cross.
7.10
If you have a copy of Impression Style, you can also access some help
files. These give you some ideas about how to use the clipart and the
borders and shows you how to create drop caps and text runaround.
7.10
Although the collection is called an Impression Style Resources disc,
you donæt have to have Style to use the drawfiles and borders, but you
do if you want to look at the help files.
7.10
Impression Style Resource Disc costs ú7.95 +VAT from DEC¡dATA.ááA
7.10
Molecular Modelling Update
7.10
Dave Kent
7.10
Just over a year ago, in Archive 6.4, I reviewed two pieces of molecular
modelling software, one from Arachne and the other from SSERC. In
February of this year, I was given the opportunity to look at updated
versions of both pieces of software. The new versions are SSERC Version
3.3 and Arachne Version 3.72. Both modellers have been improved in a
number of ways.
7.10
SSERCæs ChemMod
7.10
The main improvements with the SSERC modeller is that it is now fully
mouse-controlled and can save a number of types of structure as
drawfiles and the manual is more user friendly. Ball and stick and
coloured line structures can be saved as drawfiles. There are also a
number of molecule discs now available (at ú10 +VAT). These appear to be
compilations of molecules sent in by users and so have a rather random
feel. However, there are a large number of simple and complex molecules
available. The manual now comes in a ring binder with each page in a
plastic wallet. The menu system and overall feel of the program is
unchanged Ö it still reflects its origins in the PC world. The upgrading
cost is ú10 +VAT Ö a very reasonable price given the improvements and
the fact that the upgrade contains the first of the extra molecule
discs.
7.10
Arachneæs Modeller
7.10
The manual and tutorial are now both A5 booklets. The package includes a
pair of red/green specs for viewing the 3D options and there is also a
keystrip. Several discs of molecules are available, each disc covering a
specific area; organic, crystals and lattices and biochemistry. A disc
with a selection from the others is also available. This modeller has
undergone a greater number of changes Ö but then perhaps it needed to do
so to overcome its major problem of producing incorrect molecular shapes
for some less simple molecules.
7.10
The program algorithms for determining shape obviously have limitations
because the program still has similar problems with molecules like
cyclohexane. However, the author has introduced a number of tools and
options that attempt to solve this shortcoming.
7.10
There is an option to allow the program to use the correct bond angles
and lengths at the bond-making step. This results in the atoms jumping
to new positions on the screen as they are bonded. You need to keep
track of what is what but it is very effective for linear and branched
molecules. However, it will not work for the ring-joining step of cyclic
molecules. This is a pity because it would be nice to show that the
final molecular shapes arise from repulsions between electron pairs in
the molecules.
7.10
There is an excellent line editor/parser which generates molecules from
their formulae! Typing ÉCH4æ generates methane, whilst CH3CH2CH2CH=CH2
instantly produces a model of pentene. Alkynes can be formed using # to
represent the triple bond. Various fragments can be included using two
letter codes. For example, you only have to type
CH3CHPhCH2CHPhCH2CHPhCH3 to produce a model of the backbone of a
polystyrene molecule with three phenyl side groups. PhCx produces
benzoic acid. The resultant molecules needs a bit of twiddling to get
the conformation as you want it to be, but this is a very powerful
feature of the program. It speeds up and simplifies the production of
large molecules enormously. In fact, it forms a method of incorporating
accurate cyclohexane molecules Ö the chair and the boat form are both
offered as fragments!
7.10
A number of new tools have been added and others improved to set bond
angles angles and bond lengths. These are fairly straightforward to use
so that fine-tuning molecular shapes is fairly easy. Dot surfaces have
been added to the display types. The display quality has been improved
and the author has promised a ray-traced rendering tool in a future
upgrade. Animations can now be saved to disc, with the option of using
Acornæs Squash module.
7.10
Conclusion
7.10
The Arachne modeller has been greatly improved; it still has the better
selection of drawfile options and is very easy to use. Its inability to
calculate cycloalkane structures correctly is perhaps more a comment on
the difficulty of this task than on the modeller.
7.10
Last year, I suggested that buying both of these programs would not
break the bank and would provide an excellent set of molecular modelling
tools. The improvements to each program reinforces this view. Both are
excellent, robust and useful programs; they complement each other and
can be highly recommended.ááA
7.10
Optical OCR
7.10
Peter Jennings
7.10
Optical Character Recognition (OCR) programs, which convert images of
text saved as sprites into editable words, are such complex programs
that they have been appearing on the market well short of being fully
developed.
7.10
The standard for OCR on Acorn machines was set last year by Risc
Developmentsæ Sleuth (Archive 7.1 p53). A contender quickly followed
when the first versions of Optical and Optical Professional appeared on
the Neurotron Software stand at Acorn World, with the ability to be
user-trained to recognise new fonts.
7.10
These first versions lacked some of the intended features but, after
another five monthsæ more of intensive work, they have been added and
the öcompletedò version 2.16 of Optical Professional was issued at the
end of March.
7.10
Optical Professional costs ú119 + ú2 p&p while the budget version,
Optical, which has fewer features but can be upgraded, is ú59 + ú2 (with
no VAT to pay on either price). It comes in a smart black plastic video-
style case, containing two colour-coded discs and a 34-page well-
illustrated manual with an extra seven pages of updates. The manual is
not very well ordered, some of the instructions could be clearer and an
index would have been useful.
7.10
The program disc is encoded with a registration number and has to be
initialised with the owneræs name before it can be used. It can then be
copied onto hard disc and backed-up. Registered users are notified of
significant upgrades and can return the program disc for a free
exchange.
7.10
It must always be borne in mind that no OCR program can produce good
results unless it is working from a well-scanned sprite made from a
well-printed original. Three sample sprites of scans are provided and,
on the basis that these examples should be the best quality obtainable,
I tried them out before attempting to convert any scans of my own.
7.10
Conversion tests Optical Professional produced the following output. The
original text, which ends in mid sentence, has 573 characters.
7.10
There are two ways of placing these icons on the ruler. * Cliching on
one ol the icons Rghlights it. Then, clicking on the qraduate4 scale
causes the icon to appear at that Position on the ruler. TAs mainly
applies to tabs, since you can have up to 32 tabs on the ruler at once.
With xsargins, you can only haoe one ol each type on the ruler, so
clicking with a margin highlighted mooes the margin to the new Position.
R further restricron is that you are not allowed to place the right
margin to the left ol either the return nsar$$n or the left margin [and
oice versa). Thus, the mar$$n IVll not appear when you are cliching in
an illegal Place. * The icons can also be dragged, either from thep
current
7.10
Thirty-two characters were wrongly reproduced, making an accuracy of
94.4%. The time taken was 55 seconds. Optical Professional incorporates
an intelligent spelling checker which can be used to make corrections
either under user control or automatically. The above output text was
next auto spell checked.
7.10
There are two ways of placing these icons on the ruler. * Clicking on
one of the icons Daylights it. Then, clicking on the graduated scale
causes the icon to appear at that Position on the ruler. TAr mainly
applies to tabs, since you can have up to 32 tabs on the ruler at once.
With charging, you can only have one of each type on the ruler, so
clicking with a margin highlighted moves the margin to the new Position.
A further restricted is that you are not allowed to place the right
margin to the left of either the return coarsen or the left margin [and
vice vernal. Thus, the margin Ill not appear when you are clicking in an
illegal Place. * The icons can also be dragged, either from thee current
7.10
Spell checking added some errors of its own but reduced the total to 26,
improving accuracy to 95.4%. Inevitably, Optical has to be compared with
Risc Developmentæs Sleuth and, even though this does not have a spelling
checker, the output from the same sprite file was markedly better,
although it took three times longer to process.
7.10
There are two ways of placing these icons on Ihe ruler. É Clicking on
one of the icons highlights it. Then, clicking on the graduated scale
causes the icon to appear at that position on the ruler. This mainly
applies to tabs, since you can have up to 32 tabs on the ruler at once.
With margins, you can only have one of each type on the ruler, so
clicking with a margin highlighted moves the margin to the new position.
A further restricHon is that you are not allowed to place the right
margin to the left of either the return margin or the left margin (and
vice versa). Thus, the margin will not appear when you are clicking in
an illegal place. æThe icons can also be dragged, either from their
current
7.10
The Sleuth output had five characters wrongly interpreted, making an
accuracy of 99.1 per cent. The time taken was three minutes five
seconds.
7.10
Font definer
7.10
Opticalæs most exciting feature is its ability to be taught to recognise
new fonts. The powerful tool that makes this possible is the font
definer. At its simplest, clicking on a wrongly interpreted character in
the output window will show the original in the definer window alongside
Opticalæs guess at what it is. The latter can then be corrected in
various ways, including just deleting the guess and typing in the
correct character, which is then automatically substituted in the
output. ASCII numbers can also be entered. A quicker way to make
corrections, or to train the program to recognise a new font, is to open
the defineræs font-teaching window. This enables corrections to be made
by over-typing in the output window and the corrected character is
learnt automatically. Another window can be opened to show which
characters in that font are now recognised. When completed, the new
definitions are saved into the file of recognised fonts.
7.10
This is a fast and simple method to add new or corrected definitions for
fonts but it has some problems. Sometimes a single letter is split into
two characters by the definer and although clicking <select> and
<adjust> on the two parts of the letter will usually rejoin them, the
definer will not always accept this. There is a ligature splitter which
will try to separate joined letters but this does not always prevent two
or three closely printed characters being interpreted as a single one.
They cannot be separated nor can deletions be made to correct them.
7.10
The definer will recognise characters it has already been taught and
will make many of the corrections itself as soon as a wrong character
appears in its window. It is then rather fascinating to watch text in
the output window change as you move the cursor along it. Unfortunately,
though, this does not stop many of the errors being repeated if the same
sprite is processed again, even though the wrong characters will be
recognised as such and immediately corrected by repeated use of the font
definer.
7.10
Font teaching
7.10
I taught Optical Professional to recognise a number of different fonts
and the following examples, from a scan of part of the back page of
Archive, are typical of the results.
7.10
This is how the text was rendered before the program had been taught to
recognise the font.
7.10
@yCX!UR @AQAZ!HR GOX2AiXG
7.10
Leos Reciews Hits & tips ~ a ma!Or feature Ahicles for beginners We
latest technical ixfonoation Free small ad`s for subscrb6rs Help _
requested and offered Tomments from readers
7.10
@ACKX!GA) MA)Q @Ayy!GA
7.10
A telephone hot.Line semice for immediate help with your technical
problems. Any member can sexd wri#en e^qu&Ées, but for a fast resoo^se.
*se rhe T.H.5. Ar fts oer rear.
7.10
Using the font defineræs font teaching facility, the output was
corrected as follows. The errors still remaining are where two or three
letters have been read as a single character and could not be corrected.
7.10
Archive Magazine contains
7.10
Å News Å Reviews Å Hints & tips Ö a major feature Å Ahicles for
beginners Å We latest technical infonoation Å Free small adæs for
subscrbers Å Help Ö requested and offered Å Comments from readers
7.10
Technical Help Service
7.10
A telephone hot-line semice for immediate help with your technical
problems. Any member can send wri#en enqu&Ées, but for a fast response,
use the T.H.S. at ú15 per year.
7.10
After saving the font definitions, the same sprite was reprocessed with
the following results. Some of the errors have been repeated.
7.10
Archive @agazine contains
7.10
. News Å Reviews Å Hits & tips - a major feature Å Ahicles for beginners
Å We latest technical infonoation Å Free small adæs for subscRbers Å
Help - requested and offered Å Comments from readers
7.10
Technical Help Service
7.10
A telephone hot-line semice for immediate help with your technical
problems, Any member can send wri#en enqu &Ées, but for a fast response,
use tne T.H.S. at ú15 per year.
7.10
Twenty-one of the 350 characters were wrongly interpreted (including
hyphens for dashes), making an accuracy of 94 per cent. This rate does,
of course, vary with the quality of the original.
7.10
Optical Professional is designed to work directly from the output of
various scanners, including the Computer Concepts and Watford ranges. I
could not, however, get Optical to accept the scans made directly from
my Scanlight 256 hand scanner and Neurotron are looking into this, but
Dave Walsh of Herne Bay has reported successfully using a Watford
scanner.
7.10
The Professional version can also append text from more than one scan,
which is useful when using small hand scanners, and it can cope with
multiple columns of text and multi-coloured pages. Various speech
synthesizers can be used with it to read the output aloud.
7.10
Conclusions
7.10
Optical Professional, which has the avowed aim of becoming better than
PC programs costing well over ú600, still has some shortcomings. It is
less accurate than Sleuth although much faster and with the advantage of
being user-trainable to recognise new fonts. It can still make mistakes
with characters it has already learnt. Despite the imperfections, a 95
per cent character recognition rate is impressive at the present stage
of OCR development. Also, improvements to Optical come free but upgrades
to Sleuth, which has a price advantage (ú10 +VAT) at the moment, are to
cost extra. Both programs are still being developed and the fight for
supremacy between them will be an interesting one to watch.ááA
7.10
Advantage
7.10
George Barnett
7.10
Longman Logotron have specifically designed and produced this
spreadsheet for use in schools. A budget price Advantage may provide the
answer for users who want pupils to use a modern spreadsheet.
7.10
Students will find that Advantage offers a wide range of intuitive and
easy to use functions, including the following:
7.10
Point and click Ö Users can drive the software just by using the button
bar at the top of the sheet.
7.10
Creating a formula Ö Simply type =, enter the function, point and click
at the cells or drag across the cell ranges you want to use.
7.10
Print-to-fit Ö Allows Advantage to do the work of fitting the sheet onto
one page, whatever the size.
7.10
Charting Ö Display data using a choice of graphs (Pie, Area, Column,
Line and Scatter).
7.10
The package
7.10
The software comes as one unprotected disc (with copyright warnings).
The disc is full and contains nine tutorial worksheets, five charts, a
key strip as well as the Advantage program. An A4-size manual of
approximately 100 pages is a well presented booklet containing
comprehensive instructions on getting started. The tutorial consists of
seventeen pages starting with ÉWhat is a spreadsheet?æ and covers the
use of formulae, graphs and functions for saving and loading. The
software installs on the iconbar in the usual way and a click on the
icon produces the default spreadsheet complete with the button bar on
top of the sheet.
7.10
Getting started
7.10
The requirements are version 2 or later of RISC OS (version 3.10 or
later is recommended), at least 2Mb of RAM, a printer driver, the
Advantage program disc, a system disc containing !System, any frequently
used applications and a work disc to contain the Advantage files.
7.10
When Advantage is loaded, a blank spreadsheet is displayed, complete
with a grid of rows and cells numbered and labelled and with the title
Sheet 1. The complete worksheet contains 16,384 rows and 256 columns
with the normal labelling. Only a small part of the sheet is displayed
at any time but scroll bars may be used to reveal all.
7.10
The control window
7.10
The status bar shows what operation is in progress: Enter, Edit, Copy,
Point, etc. If no operation is in progress, it displays Ready. The Tool
(Button) bar has cut, copy, paste, fill cells with data, realign data
left, centre, or right in the selected cells. There is a button which
makes an intelligent guess at the cells needed to be added. Another is
used to display a menu of frequently used functions and finally a button
which opens a chart window to display the selected data in chart form.
The charts available are Area, Bar, Column, Line, Pie and Scatter.
Titles may be added to charts. Curiously, the Adjust size icon is not
displayed but a pointer placed in the absent position with <select>
depressed will size the window.
7.10
General
7.10
The manual provides eight pages on the use of formulae and Advantage
provides around 100 functions for use to build formulae. The facility to
automatically use a repeated formula by highlighting columns or rows and
clicking on the Fill button is quite impressive. There are four fonts
supplied with the usual variations but 256 fonts could be used in a
single worksheet should it be necessary.
7.10
Row height and column width can be changed easily with the mouse by
moving the cursor onto the row or column labels then dragging, the
gridlines may be moved as required.
7.10
There are 21 built-in formats which cannot be deleted or changed. These
are selected from a menu displayed when required. For example, by
selecting one particular built-in format, on entering 1250, ú1250 would
be displayed.
7.10
Printing worksheets or charts could not be simpler with the normal
facilities for Page Setup, Orientation, Headers, Footers, and Scaling
output.
7.10
Advantage worksheets can be saved and loaded as normal files, drawfiles,
CSV (Comma Separated Values) or SID (Software Independent Data format)
files.
7.10
Conclusion
7.10
Advantage is a user-friendly spreadsheet, well documented (although I
would have preferred an A5 format) and inexpensive. The price is ú49
+VAT from Longman Logotron for a single user version (ú55 through
Archive). The primary school site licence pack is ú120 +VAT (ú132
through Archive) and the secondary school licence is ú190 +VAT (ú207
through Archive).ááA
7.10
Bible Software for Acorn Computers
7.10
Colin Randall
7.10
Do you get fed up with running ÉBibleMasteræ using the PC Emulator? The
emulator is both slow and memory-consuming. In BibleMaster, saving
passages for use in DTP is quite a fiddle. But what can we do apart from
lobbying Hodder & Stoughton to produce Bible software for use on Acorn
computers?
7.10
I have found a partial solution. The main things I want to be able to do
with Bible Software are:
7.10
1) Call up a passage quickly
7.10
2) ÉCut and pasteæ passages into DTP documents
7.10
3) Do word and phrase counts and searches
7.10
4) Save such lists.
7.10
I can now do all this wholly within the Acorn environment, and the
process is simplicity itself, although time-consuming to set up
initially.
7.10
What I use is Risc Developmentsæ DeskEdit which comes with Acornæs
ÉFindæ utility. First of all, the separate books of the Bible (in NIV)
were saved as separate DOSátext files and then changed to Edit files
(using DeskEdit). These were then put into directories (as the NT
directory above) so as to allow searches to take place following the
Biblical order of books. Each book was then edited so that each line
gave chapter and verse reference (see below) Ö this is important for
searches. This is the long part.
7.10
Using these text files is simplicity itself. Different passages can be
displayed on screen at the same time because DeskEdit allows multiple
windows within the same text file. To cut and paste, it is simply a
matter of highlighting a section and and dropping the resulting text
file into Impression (or any other DTP program). A simple search
facility is provided with DeskEdit (indeed even with Edit), but this
only finds the first occurrence of a word or phrase. However, Acornæs
ÉFindæ utility comes free with DeskEdit (see below) and is very
powerful.
7.10
All uses of a word or phrase will be displayed (see below) and the list
itself can be saved as a text file. Moreover, if DeskEditæs ÉThrowbackæ
facility is used, clicking on one line in the list will call up the text
file and open it at the right place. ÉFindæ can be used to go through
the whole Bible or just a single book. It is not fast (I use it on an
A4000), but quite adequate, and is not limited by the size of any
directory loaded for searching. It would be quite possible to drop a
file containing several different versions of the Bible into ÉFindæ, and
it would merrily work its way through them. It can also cope with
wildcards.
7.10
If anyone would like to help me edit text files by putting chapter and
verse references at the start of each line, please contact me and we can
pool our work. The same processes can also be used with hymns and
liturgies and I am slowly building up collections.
7.10
Please also contact me if you would be interested in forming a Christian
Acorn User Group, for sharing experiences, discoveries and ideas,
perhaps via a simple newsletter.
7.10
Rev. Colin Randall, The Rectory, Swan Lane, Long Hanborough, Witney,
Oxon. OX8 8BT (0993-881270).
7.10
(DeskEdit3 retails at ú27.19 + VAT from Risc Developments or ú30 through
Archive.)ááA
7.10
Larger Ö The Virtual Desktop
7.10
Dave Wilcox
7.10
Larger is a piece of software being sold by a company called ÉWarm
Silence Softwareæ at a mere ú10. This includes VAT and p&p and, at the
Companyæs discretion, free future upgrades Ö not a bad start.
7.10
The version received for review is 2.05 but WSS are currently working on
version 2.06. There appear to be frequent modifications to the software,
mainly based on requests made by users.
7.10
The package
7.10
The program comes on one 3╜ö floppy disc accompanied by Sparkplug from
David Pilling (PD de-archive utility), and two Ésparkedæ directories Ö
ÉBackdropsæ and ÉManualæ. There is no fancy packaging, no printed
manual, just the disc and a covering letter from the company. What a
refreshing change Ö you are paying for the software. I know one other
person who works on these lines Ö he is also mentioned above!
7.10
The manual and backdrops
7.10
The sparked file called Émanualæ contains files in Impression, Draw and
Easiwriter formats. Future versions are hoped to include Ovation,
PipeDream and Wordz versions, if required. I used the Impression manual
and printed out 25 sheets of A4. The manual is well thought out and is
laid out very professionally. It is clear, concise and easy to follow Ö
a pleasure to read. Larger was soon loaded onto my machine configured
and up and running.
7.10
The backdrops directory is self-explanatory and contains four sample
backdrops designed for WSS Ö great for WSS but a waste of space for you
or me. This would be better left off or a few general samples included.
7.10
The program
7.10
The disc is not copy-protected, but each has a unique serial number
registered to the owner. The application can be transferred to hard disc
by dragging, this being the preferred environment for use of the
program. Loading the application requires the usual double-click, with
the application appearing on the iconbar, but this is configurable to
load on the bar or not. Even if no iconbar icon is selected, the
application menu is obtainable from any area of the backdrop. Once
Larger is loaded, your desktop takes on a new dimension Ö instead of
being the size of your screen, the backdrop can now be up to a million
times bigger.
7.10
Items you now select to be dropped onto the backdrop can be configured
via the application menu option to appear on 3D slabs textured in a
similar way to the Acorn Newlook pattern, or like the usual pinboard
with icons and application names. Applications can have their names
shown or just their icons. When a selection is made, you can choose to
have inverted icons and/or depressed slabs.
7.10
The main option is for the organisation of Épinsæ applied to the
backdrop. There are Égravityæ options of left, right, up and down, or
none, for Applications, Directories, Backdrops and Iconised sprites.
This gives you a neat backdrop by just dragging and letting go.
Alternatively, by selecting Énoneæ, you have the versatility to arrange
your own layout. All sprites are grid-locked for the sake of neatness.
7.10
If directories are loaded on the backdrop, you have the further options
to either open the filer window and/or set the directory as the CSD. The
usual filer operations can also be applied Ö access, copy, rename, etc,
but you also have extra facilities. Any files dragged onto them can be
saved or auto-started, the parent directory can be opened, or hot-key
options can be applied as per settings within the config file.
7.10
The virtual desktop section allows you to set the way you are able to
move around this extra large desk space. The best way I found was the
default selection of holding <shift> and moving the mouse to the
position required. Backdrop sprite control is also configurable from
this menu, giving the usual centred, tiled or scaled options, and
automatic path inclusion by dragging and dropping your backdrop sprite
to the window having the text input focus. Hot-key selection is defined
within this menu for the frequently used options of Larger if required.
Another option available is the selection of desktop focus as either
Éclick to typeæ or Éfocus with pointeræ. I found this best left on the
Éclick to typeæ option, as the cursor then stays where you left it,
especially useful in Impression documents.
7.10
The nicest aspect of this program is the possibility of having many
different backdrop configurations saved on the main backdrop. A simple
double-click on the required backdrop selects it and changes your
pinboard to the new selected topic. A double-click with <adjust> on the
blank background takes you back to the main backdrop. This allows you to
configure different pins for different tasks, e.g. DTP, Comms, Graphics,
etc and thereby avoid the clutter of a large number of Épinsæ.
7.10
Once you have configured your backdrops and sub-backdrops, it is
necessary to save the icons used within Larger in order that the correct
sprites are applied to the correct slabs. It is also necessary to save
the backdrop settings Ö both are easily done from the main menu. On my
set-up, I lost a sprite from the ArcFax printer when the system was re-
booted. This is not really a problem Ö you either save the relevant
sprite into Largeræs internal sprite pool or you include a filer-boot
line in your boot file. This latter method I found to be best. If you
modify your backdrop, you need to resave both backdrop and a new sprites
file Ö saving the new sprites file will erase your included sprite.
7.10
All of the configuring completed, you now come to the use of the larger
backdrop allowing you to have numerous windows open, memory permitting.
If you have a desktop area for graphics, for instance, you can load your
application(s) and open their windows. Then you can load your DTP
application(s), open a window and, whilst holding down <shift>, move the
window off the screen until a clear backdrop is found and use the DTP
here. (Pins remain visible regardless of screen movement.)
7.10
If you wish to return to the graphics area, either move back the same
way or use the map option. This is a graphical display of the whole
backdrop and simply clicking on the desired location brings this to the
centre of the screen. If you want all windows back on the work-screen, a
retrieve option is available.
7.10
There is a user-defined menu section for installation of your own most
used commands. Examples are given ready installed on this menu option,
and programming your own items is relatively simple Ö the manual
contains examples to help.
7.10
Conclusion
7.10
This has got to be easily the best piece of software of its kind
available at present. Although there are several PD programs available,
which work along similar lines, they fall well short of this program.
Larger is highly recommended.
7.10
Warm Silence Software can be contacted on 0865-54382 or by snail mail at
St. Catharineæs College, Manor Road, Oxford, OX1 3UJ.ááA
7.10
Music Box
7.10
Paul Cross
7.10
Music Box from Topologika comes in a colourful, if flimsy, box and the
programs are on two discs Ö a program disc and a resources disc. In the
single user version, the program disc is a key disc which must be in the
drive when you run the software. (There must be a better way of
protecting software than this. If you use a hard disc, as many people
do, you have to search for the key disc every time you want to start the
program Ö most inconvenient!)
7.10
To complement the discs, there are a number of booklets and some printed
photocopiable sheets, plus the obligatory Éjustification of use sheetæ,
all about how suitable the program is for use with the National
Curriculum. The cost of all this ú38 if you buy it from Archive.
7.10
What does it do?
7.10
After you have loaded the Music Box program, (a little tedious if you
load it from floppy disc as it requires some disc swapping), a little
blue box with the word Émusicæ written on it will appear on the iconbar
and it opens to let musical notes out when the program is active. On the
screen will be a menu, in the form of four pictures showing the four
parts to the program. It is obvious that the program is designed for use
in schools. In fact, it is designed for younger children working towards
Key Stage 1, (AT1) Performing and Composing and (AT2) Listening and
Appraising. It will also be useful for children working towards towards
Key Stage 2 who lack musical experience or as a precursor to using
Éproperæ music notation.
7.10
The menu
7.10
The four parts of Music Box are, Sound Box, Chord Box, Beat Box and Tune
Box.
7.10
If you click on an icon, the screen will fill with a collection of items
to enable you to make and record music. There are a number of items
common to all screens: a Étape recorderæ to record your music-making, a
variable metronome to keep you in time, a volume control, save and load
facilities and the exit to leave the program and return to the main
menu.
7.10
Using the program
7.10
The main theme of the programs is that you should experiment with sounds
and patterns. The programs need an input from an adult to direct and
keep the children on target otherwise they will play without much point
to their activity. When I first used the program, I tried it with a
group of children who lacked musical experience, I was unsure of its
usefulness. However, when I tried it with a group who played instruments
and had some understanding of music they were more purposeful and soon
constructed interesting sound patterns.
7.10
The program grows on you and you have to allow time for experimentation
and direct the children to the next stage of work Ö some playing is
important. All the groups of children who used the program, whether they
made a Étuneæ or not, clearly enjoyed the activity.
7.10
The resources disc
7.10
This disc contains a number of files to supplement the main program, but
the main one is !MBInsts. This contains 35 additional instruments which
you can use to replace the seven set by the program. Each of the sounds
is stored as a sound module and has its own natty little icon. You can
use your own sound modules and icons if you wish.
7.10
There are also sample tunes, chords and rhythms (beats) stored in
!MBFiles and this is the place you can save your own creations.
7.10
Additional resources include drawfiles to print out blank CHORDS and
STAVES record sheets.
7.10
These are useful to allow children to record their musical creations,
and to aid their work towards Érealæ notation.
7.10
Conclusions
7.10
This is one of those programs that needs Éto be given a chanceæ. As a
non-musician, I found it useful as it helps me teach elements of
National Curriculum music that I find difficult. The children enjoyed
using it. The groups that had two chances of working with the program
produced tunes and rhythms quickly and tunefully. Finally, the quality
of the music can be improved by playing it through an external amplifier
or by using headphones and the latter allows the rest of the class to
concentrate on their work until it is their turn to use the program.ááA
7.10
Celtic Designs and Church Year Clipart
7.10
Peter Jennings
7.10
If you do any sort of desk top publishing, you can never have too much
clipart. Public domain libraries are the best sources for buying the
more general subjects cheaply but it is always a pleasure to find more
specialised topics when you need them. Two of these now available are
Celtic Designs, from Glyn Howells, at ú10.99 (no VAT) and The Church
Year, Parish Magazine clipart set, from DEC_ dATA, at ú7.95 +VAT. Both
come on single unprotected discs and have similar copyright notices
saying they can be used for printing in DTP and other applications but
permission must be obtained for commercial use.
7.10
Celtic patterns
7.10
The Celtic Designs disc has 33 black and white drawfiles of borders,
chains, motifs and panels which can be combined in various ways to
create other patterns. Some of the borders are designed to be used in
Impression. There is also an instructional drawfile showing how the
designs can be manipulated by changing the thickness of the lines and
using colours for lines and fills.
7.10
The collection comprises nine borders, rectangular, round and oval, plus
three Impression borders; ten chains, vertical and horizontal; seven
motifs, mostly knot designs, and four panels.
7.10
The file names are uninformatively numbered, such as öBorder1ò, örhaff1ò
(a chain) so it would have been useful to have had a printout showing
them. One may be included in future£ but, in the meantime, to make the
best use of this collection, it is worth getting a graphics cataloguing
program, such as the public domain PickAPic (Shareware 45), if you do
not already have one.
7.10
The designs are based on Celtic originals, rather than being precisely
copied from them. Despite this, it could be a useful collection for
appropriate projects in history and art although its main intention is
simply to provide decorative motifs for general use. It may seem a
little expensive for non-specialised purposes, compared with PD discs,
but the designs are intricate and attractive and can be used for unusual
and strikingly effective decoration.
7.10
A second disc is in preparation if there proves to be a demand for it.
7.10
(£We have recently received a copy of a printed directory that now comes
with the clipart so that you can see what the designs look like before
loading the files. Ed.)
7.10
Church symbols
7.10
The Church Year is aimed directly at very specialised users. Anyone
expecting colourful Biblical scenes, suitable perhaps for Easter and
Christmas cards, will be disappointed. There are 105 symbolic designs,
supplied as black and white drawfiles, to illustrate themes from the
Church of Englandæs Alternative Service Book throughout the year. Some
are traditional symbols for the theme and others are based on the
contents of the lessons set for the day.
7.10
The drawings have a simple, rather old-fashioned, look that borders on
folk art. They are mainly suitable for use as öthumbnailò illustrations
and there is a note that many are best printed in 2.5cm (1 inch)
squares. The files are numbered, not named, but all the images have
printed captions. They are catalogued, in a text file, with a list of
holy days and festivals throughout the year (Good Friday, the 9th Sunday
before Christmas, the 4th Sunday in Lent, and so on), the daysæ themes
and the numbers of the files which illustrate them. This makes it easy
to find the symbol needed for any occasion.
7.10
This collection is clearly labelled for parish magazines and it provides
an inexpensive selection of small illustrations for them and possibly
for other Church purposes, such as text cards and hymn sheets, but the
designs are rather esoteric and there are few that would be of more
general use.ááA
7.10