Archive Magazine 1997/ARCHIVE_97.iso/text/hints/vol_10/issue_10

Text File | 1997-08-11 | 7KB | 171 lines

Hints and Tips
10.10
ANT Suite Fresco tip Ö If you put a text file called Runables inside
!Fresco, containing a list of filetypes as hexadecimal digits (upper
or lower case), then when a link to a file having one of these types
is clicked on, the file will be fetched and filer_run. Here is my
Runables file:
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# See (a homebaked hypertext system)
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 0a4
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# MS Word 6 or 7
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 ae6
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# drawfile
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 aff
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# DVI file
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 ce4
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# Techwriter
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 d01
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Fresco appears not to mind initial spaces or comment lines. In this
way, Fresco could be used for hypertext Ö say within teaching (öif
you want to see the proof click hereò). Also, we can use web pages
with links to DVI files. This provides a mechanism which is platform
independent as far as the student or the person creating the material
is concerned.
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Gavin Wraith, [e-mail]
10.10
Magazine storage öGreen Styleò Ö Two similarly praiseworthy tips this
month in the magazine storage saga...
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(1) Steve Drain (Archive 10.9) recommends IKEAæs PENG A4 racks cut
down @ ú3 for 8. Thanks for the suggestion, but I think these, and
all previous suggestions, are money down the Drain (oops!). In
classic Blue Peter style, here are some Iámade earlier...
10.10
For breakfast we eat Kelloggæs Bran Flakes, 750 gram size packet.
Once all the flakes are eaten, we recycle the empty boxes for
magazine storage, by cutting them down to about 20cm and then making
a neat V¡cut in one of the short sides for ease of access. These
recycled boxes will easily hold a yearæs supply of Archive at no cost
whatever. You can either leave them plain or, as an added luxury,
paint them with poster paints or cover them with old wallpaper
samples.
10.10
Derek Banks, [e-mail]
10.10
(2) Further to the saga of A5 magazine storage Ö try Tesco! Go to the
check out counters near the wine department. There you will find
small empty boxes which once contained six bottles of wine. There are
many different sizes, and with careful measurement itáis possible to
find an exact fit for A5 magazines. Thenáuse a sharp knife to trim
the top. At the moment, I am using Tesco Bordeaux Blanc Semillon.
Risc User is somewhat harder to accommodate. Tesco Napoleon Brandy is
just too large for a snug fit, so I must take a copy with me on my
next visit to town. Hope this may be of interest to readers.
10.10
Philip Prior <[e-mail]>
10.10
RND, ÖTIME and TIME$ Ö The usual way to make Basic produce a
reasonably random number is to seed the random number generator with
the value of TIME using lines like:
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R%=RND(ÖTIME)
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var%=RND(whatever%)
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This assumes that TIME has been ticking for a reasonably random
number of centiseconds since you switched on. However, I am not sure
if it works in a program called from the boot sequence, as the number
of centiseconds from start-up at that point could always be the same.
This may seem unlikely, but it might explain something that produced
a certain amount of head-scratching for me. I wanted to choose at
random between two screen savers at start-up, and wrote a small Basic
program using lines like those above, but this always seemed to get
the same saver, so perhaps I was always getting the same seed for the
random number generator.
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Another way of doing it more randomly is to extract one of the
components of TIME$. This reads the real-time clock, and returns a
string along the lines of öSat,17 May 1997.15:05:14ò. You can then
extract, say, the seconds component of this using M%=VAL(MID$(T$,23,
2)), and then go on to R%=RND(ÖM%). This does give me a randomly
chosen screen saver!
10.10
Peter Young <[e-mail]>
10.10
StrongED abbreviations Ö Iæve been getting frustrated because of the
difference between the abbreviation systems of StrongED and
Impression. On the latter, for example, I type ösw ò and up pops the
word ösoftware ò. On StrongED, Iáhave to type ö`swò Ö well, I used
to, but Iæve discovered a better way.
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The trouble was, Iæd be using StrongED and type öswáò, realise that
Iæd got the wrong abbreviation system and have to delete it all and
start again. Not any more! I suddenly realised that StrongED can cope
with any key combination for an abbreviation. All youæve got to do is
make sure you donæt use a combination that might appear in the middle
of a word somewhere else. So all my abbreviations now take the form
of ösw#ò and so, if I mistakenly type ösw ò, all I do is delete the
space and type a ö#ò, which is much less frustrating.
10.10
Ed. <[e-mail]>
10.10
Zap and Basic Ö With reference to the comments in Archive 10.7 p23,
there is an easy way to avoid the space and token troubles: use the
colours!
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Set Background1 on Display> Colours> to colour 4 (default 7) and you
can see every space. Typing a space elsewhere on a line with trailing
spaces removes them all.
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Secondly, set Tokenised on Display> Colours> to colour 2 (default 0)
and you can see if a keyword is tokenised or plain ASCII. This is
especially important when a trailing space is needed, as for RETURN.
Omitting a space converts the token immediately back to text Ö very
WYSIWYG!
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Donæt forget to untick the All Modes in the Colours submenu before
any change is made, and also when saving these options. You only have
to count the number yourself in the 0-15 colour-palette. The Colour
Picker also allows you to use a colour ╜ (3átimes 93.7%), a warm
white or soft grey, which Iáuse as background in text windows,
together with foreground 8. It also exists in a 16 colour screen mode.
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Another easy way to convert Basic to plain text is <shift-copy> (now
<shift-end>) or from the menu ÉFile> Print> Dumpæ. Next, you only
need to select the whole text and Indent Ö11 to remove the line
numbers. It is also useful to make a separate and independent copy of
a text window without saving.
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To avoid problems in copying or moving blocks, click <select> after
the text on the preceding line and click <adjust> after the text on
the last line. You can now place the cursor elsewhere, after some
text on a line, even on the last numbered line, and execute the
operation. Renumber to avoid backwards-errors. It is now ready to
save without any complaints.
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Ed van der Meulen, Nuenen, Netherlands.
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Ed has also sent us some other useful bits and pieces which are on
the monthly program disc.
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!Scrn is perhaps a somewhat unusual way of programming, but it is an
easy way for all sorts of toggles.
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!caSA (Cache on/off) has a slightly modified construction to avoid a
little odd behaviour.
10.10
!Tumble (on SA CD-ROM) has the same bugs relating to its use on
machines with 1 Mb VRAM. Itáis cured by a preceding ÉXæ in all the
SYS commands. All the changes are given in the !Changes-file inside
for DIY. It now tumbles on a clear screen with 1 Mb VRAM and 1500Kb
slotsize.
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Iiyama17T is a MDF-file for the 8617T-monitor, suitable for 1 Mb
VRAM. I have cured nearly all modes, so all old modes, except 16, 17,
23 and 24, can now be called by number. And the circles are once
again, as in the early days, round!
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Thanks, Ed. Ed(!)