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<PICLOAD>LETTERS.DAJ
<PICSHOWD>000,000,192,107,064
STOS CORNER LETTERS PAGE
Well my first letters page since becoming STOS editor. Note that there
probably won't be one every month, only when I get at least two letters to
answer. This section is for those of you that wish to write to me personally
about any STOS related subjects, or at least a chat about what you think of
this section. Please not that when sending any letters in, if they are more
than ten lines long then they must be sent in as an ascii file on a disk. If
you want a personal reply then please send an S.S.A.E. Please send all letters
to the address in the STOS editorial.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Deano
Up to now I have been one of your silent majority, but not any more. I was
reading an article, I think it was in STOSSER 12, and at the end the author
wrote "I don't know if anyone will read this and find it of any use, and I
don't suppose I ever will". Well after that I thought what a thankless task it
must be writing articles without any feedback, so here I am, doing something I
seem to have lost the habit of....writing a letter.
First about myself, I'm another old reader (64) and bought my Atari s/h about
3 years ago. I battled with First Basic for 6 month's and was fast beginning
to lose interest in computers, then I ran the STOS disk that came with the s/h
package and I was up and running again. I don't know anyone else with an Atari
and all I had was the "USERS GUIDE" so I worked my way through that. I could
draw circles, box's, bar's and even make a matchstick man walk across the
screen. But there's only so much you can learn from a book. I understood
commands like left$, right$ and intr but not what use they were. Then I bought
a copy of STOSSER and found all my questions being answered. I now have 28
copies and looking forward to No29, which should be on it's way from
Floppyshop.
To someone like myself working in isolation with just a book, the discovery of
other people using STOS and what could be done with it was like Robinson
Crueso being dumped in the middle of Cardiff Arms Park just as Wales scored a
5th try in their 49 to 0 win over England. To be able to browse through
someone else's code and change thing to see what happens, to be able to
'borrow' bit's and use them in my own code, to have explained the use of
left$, right$ ect in terms I could understand, well what more could you ask
for. Without STOSSER I would never have heard of extensions. The only Bob I
knew was Bob the Barber (#2.75 short back and sides). There's even someone
offering to help me with my problems. If I'm ever short of an idea to work on
out come the STOSSER'S and in a short time off we go again. It may be the
STOSSER displayer, I think now how do they do that, or something in an article
or the giveaways, but it happens every time.
So to the person who wrote in STOSSER 12 I'd like to say, yes someone did read
it and found it very useful. And to everyone who's worked on STOSSER thank
you, it's kept me away from having to watch Eastenders.
After a lot of pondering I'm sending some code in. I don't know what standard
my code is at, good bad or bloody awful, anyway it's up to you if you use it
or not. There's not a lot as most of my work was on my hard drive when it
packed up (see problems).
Talking about hard drives, one of the reasons I bought a s/h one was that I
knew next to nothing about them. And the little bit I could find to read only
confused me more, there was talk of hard formatting, soft formatting,
partitions and bare drives. So I choose one I could just plug in and use, but,
if I'm not able to get my drive sorted out I'm going to face the same problems
again. Now it would be a big help if one of your readers with the necessary
knowledge could perhaps write an article for STOSSER on the buying and
commissioning of hard drives.
Your always very polite in STOSSER. I was wondering if it may be an idea to
tear some code apart and tell us the bad parts of it, and perhaps how to put
it right. If you think it's worth a try, and have someone willing to do it,
they can pull apart anything I've sent in with the greatest of pleasure.
Again thank you for STOSSER Your's Faithfully Bill Jones (GRANDAD) P.S
I'm sending everything to you as you seem to be doing it all at the moment.
I'm putting some stamps in in case you have to send my problems or code on to
someone else. If you don't well your a couple of stamp's to the good.
PROBLEMS
First my hard drive has died, sad really as I'd not made any back up's, anyway
I sent it to THE UPGRADE SHOP, for the kiss of life, but as it's an old m/c
they could'nt do anything without the installation software. Now I had the
drive s/h and it was all set up and I never thought about any software. So
could I ask through STOSSER if anyone has the software would they get in touch
and we could work something out. The name of the drive is "VORTEX H/D" and
it's of German manufacture.
SECOND My Doc.Display is based on an article by Mr Goodfellow in STOSSER 9.
Now I've got this quite astonishing gift. I can read a screen full of text
over and over again then as soon as I clear it I forget every word of it, so I
print things out for easy reference, which brings us back to my problem. My
main Doc loads and prints well enough as long as the file isn't packed, the
second Doc will load a packed file but will not print it. Now I've found a way
around this by loading it letter by letter into a string but it takes a long
time, I'm sending the code so I hope you see what I mean. You load and print
packed file's in STOSSER so could you tell me if there's a better way for me
to do so.
PROBLEM UPDATE
After writing this letter and just before posting it I had another look at the
problem and I seem to have solved it. It was in one of the examples by Mr
Goodfellow and had been staring me in the face and I should have spotted it
earlier but then nobodies perfect. In the article Mr G had a search routine
which put some of the unpacked file into a string using the space$ and copy
commands. Well I just put the complete file into a string using these commands
and it works a treat. Just 3 or 4 lines of code and its as if the file had
never been packed. I don't know if this is the correct way to do it but, I
suppose any way that works is a correct way.
I've left the problem on disk and added all this to show how much I use
STOSSER. In the first instance I would never have coded the Doc without the
mag, I would never been able to work on the File Selector without the set of
"Customized "articles and then when I hit a snag I've got all that code to
look though to help me find a way around it.
SECOND UPDATE
It seems I'm not as clever as I thought I was, the new code will print out a
couple of files correctly then the next file the paper moves up two lines
instead of the one line. So I'm back where I started asking can I print packed
files using my type of display.
THIRD (SMALL ONE)
What the hell is an ST ZIPPER for the Giveaway in STOSSER 28?
AGAIN
WITH THANKS
BILL JONES
<PICSHOWD>000,000,192,107,064
DEANO REPLIES:
Glad you found STOSSER useful to you Bill, sadly as you know issue 29 is the
last ever STOSSER. However you can now learn new things in this section of ST+
because we have a small selection of articles each month plus a tutorial on
coding a game or program.
About your hard drive problem, well I have written an article on hard drives
for beginners explaining the terms you mentioned. As for your enquires on
writing doc displayers and getting hold of the installation software for your
hard drive then I will place your address here. For anybody reading who can
help Bill out then here is his address.
W.A.JONES.
KIMBERLEY
MYRTLE LANE
PEN-Y-MAES
HOLYWELL
FLINTSHIRE
CH8 7BS
As for splitting up code well I don't tend to split up other peoples code as
sometimes its hard to follow. However the STOS tutorials do this with the code
examples so you can follow it quite easily.
Finally the ST ZIPPER program is used to create and unpack ZIP files which are
a load of files compressed and put all together into one file. These files
have the extension ZIP.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thats it for this issue, don't forget....we need your letters. Send them in to
the usual address.