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AMY REPORT WEEKLY ONLINE MAGAZINE
July 13, 1988
Vol I No. 3
============
APEInc., P.O. BOX 74, Middlesex, N.J. 08846-0074
PUBLISHER MANAGING EDITOR
Ron Kovacs R.F.Mariano
============================================================
AMY REPORT EDITOR: Henry T. Colonna
CIS:74726,3216 GEnie:HTCOLONNA
Headquarters Bulletin Boards
Amiga Headquarters
NEXUS
804-547-1065
ST Report North ST Report Central ST Report South
201-968-8148 216-784-0574 904-786-4176
------------------------------------
CONTENTS
========
* Editor's Corner....................* Electronic Arts News............
* Aztech Source Level Debugger.......* Fujitsu 24 Pin Color Dot Matrix.
* Macintosh Emulator for Amiga?......* UEdit News......................
* Using WordPerfect with LaserJet....* Phoenix PFD135 Disk Drive.......
* Ports of Call Review...............* WordPerfect Library Review......
* Amic-Term 1.0 Preview................................................
=========================================================================
Serving you on: CompuServe - GEnie
=========================================================================
Editor's Corner:
There's been little feedback here and there but I have gotten some valuable
advice from a few people who've spoken up. Most of the criticism hasn't
centered around content but around some errors in the text itself. For
instance, CompuServe isn't hyphenated. I fixed it, look up a few lines
above. There are typos - I can't run a spelling checker in 512K. By next
issue I hope to have one meg.
Let me add some of my own criticism - I'm extremely weak in the areas of
graphics (including video), sound, desktop publishing and programming.
I hope that some contributors out there are going to volunteer to help me
fill those wholes in. This issue, for instance, has an excellent review
from Drew Lucy on Manx's Source Level Debugger.
One of the best things about Amy Report will be the speed at which I can
getcinformation out. This issue's "hot" items include an advance preview
ofcAmic-Term 1.0, and a dissection of WordPerfect's Library. Speaking of
reviews, I'd like to talk a bit about what my reviews strive for. I don't
believe in perfection, and I will point out flaws in programs that I
review, even if I have to dig a little. I have a reaction with several
magazines - when one bad thing is said about a program I infer that it's
three times as bad as what's said. I hope that with Amy Report, but the
content of the reviews will be good, as well quick. Let me know if I'm
succeeding or failing.
The SYSOP of Nexus, Amy Report's official BBS, is still on vacation, so
don't bother calling yet.
Enough patting myself on the back! On with issue number three.
==========================================================================
Electronic Arts News
====================
Whither Deluxe Print II?
According to an Electronic Arts representative, the Deluxe Print II upgrade
has been delayed until late September (1988 I presume.) This product is
reaching classic VaporWare status.
Interceptor's Shadow Sub
Late-breaking news on CompuServe's AmigaForum - much to the surprise of
many, it appears that the Shadow Sub in the final mission is sinkable.
I haven't tried it myself, but fire missiles into the control tower.
Even if it does sink, it still doesn't excuse the very poor design of this
mission.
Bard's Tale II
Bard's Tale II has shipped for the Amiga and is not copy-protected at all.
No codewheel, no disk-drive grinding disk protection. I wonder if this
is a sign of things to come. I liked the codewheel idea in Interceptor,
but it's asked for too often, and this method of protection (none at all)
is far superior.
Calling Electronic Arts
Calling Electronic Arts' long distance number can be a frustrating
experience, depending on which department is trying to be reached. There's
a tangled series of steps to take before talking to a human being, and
depending on what department a customer needs to reach, quite a few
minutes can be spent. It's probably more economical to hop on one of the
networks to ask questions on availability, hints, or problems.
==========================================================================
Aztec C68K
Source Level Debugger (SDB)
for the
Amiga
--By Drew Lucy
OVERVIEW
========
You've seen it advertised since the middle of last year. You saw it demoed
at the New York AmiExpo in October of 1987. You wondered when the heck are
they going to ship the darn thing. Well, in February, I received a copy of
the long awaited Manx Source Level Debugger. I have been generally pleased
with the program but somewhat confused by it ever since. Despite a few
bugs and other shortcomings, the initial release of SDB is a good product
that I expect will become even better in future releases. At its best, SDB
is a powerful and reasonably intuitive software developement tool that goes
a long way toward taking C language program debugging out of the Dark Ages.
When operating at its worst, it is virtually useless. The initial version
of the manual should be a source of embarassment to the people responsible
for producing it. It's barely better than having no manual at all.
What does a source level debugger do for you? The SDB manual introduction
states that the program allows the user to:
1) debug at C source and assembly language levels
2) control text and background colors in the windows
3) reference memory locations using full C expressions
4) name, modify, and display variables, structures and arrays using
C source names
5) set breakpoints
6) trace and backtrace
7) define reusable macros
In other words, you can kiss debugging printf's goodbye, drastically
reducing the amount of time spent iterating through seemingly endless
recompile and test cycles. However, SDB isn't just a timesaving
convenience. If you are so inclined, SDB allows you, via command macros
and command history files, to set up exactly defined repeatable experiments
on your faulty program. On the other hand, SDB gives you the freedom to
poke around in the nooks and crannies of your program, immediately follow
up on hunches and, when all else fails, browse through a progam until you
stumble across an error. In a sense, a source level debugger is to program
developement what a spreadsheet program is to accounting, since it allows
the programmer to easily play "what-if" games with his code and data.
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
===================
A program must be compiled and linked with Version 3.6a of Manx Aztec C
in order to be debugged with SDB. Manx recommends a minimum of 256K bytes
of available RAM to run SDB. Obviously, this number is highly dependent on
the size of the program you're working on. Your actual milage may vary.
The debugger itself actually consumes only 180K of memory and about 89K of
disk space. Not surprisingly, on my 1 Meg two floppy A1000, disk space
turned out to be more of a problem than memory. Finally, Manx claims that
SDB can be used with any member of the Motorola 68000 CPU family.
THE DISPLAY
===========
SDB's display is generated on the WorkBench screen in a single Intuition
window, broken up horizontally into three psudo windows. The top "window"
displays the source code of the current file, while the bottom window
displays the output of the debugger commands. Between these windows is a
single line Command Window for entering, you guessed it, SDB commands.
Each of these windows is independently scrollable, using either rodent or
keyboard commands. Strangely, SDB doesn't use any menus at all. The size
of the Source and Output Windows may be adjusted by sliding the Command
Window up and down the screen.
The most notable thing about the display is the handling of the command
buffer. Although the Command Window is only about 75 characters wide,
individual commands may be up to 128 characters long. SDB buffers 500
characters worth of commands as a reuseable command history, similar to
the operation of "ConMan". The big difference is that SDB doesn't save
duplicate commands in the buffer; it reuses them! Thus entering 50 single
step commands (intermixed with other commands) results in just one 's'
command being saved in the command history. This feature makes the 500
byte command buffer seem much larger. The Output Window provides the
record of what you've done, not the command history. Instead, the command
history is provides a pool of editable reusable commands. The Command
Window also supports an extensive set of line editing commands that makes
SDB a joy to use compared to Microsoft's CodeView. CodeView has no
editing support and no command history.
COMMANDS BY CATEGORY
====================
SDB commands consist of one, two or three letters followed by a somewhat
bewildering set of arguments. For two letter commands, the first letter
defines the category of the command and the second letter defines the
specific command. For example, the 'd' category of commands display
things. The "df" command displays a specified section of a source file,
while "db" displays a series of memory locations as hexidecimal bytes.
Just about all commands can be prefixed with a repeat count.
Amiga Specific Commands
-----------------------
Commands beginning with 'a' provide Amiga specific functions, which range
from the purely cosmetic (changing the display colors) to the occasionally
useful (automatically displaying some of the System Lists).
Breakpoint Commands
-------------------
Commands beginning with 'b' are used to manage two types of breakpoints and
a couple of other program execution control facilities. Address
Breakpoints halt the program when a specified source line is about to be
executed. Address Breakpoints are usually set at a source line number but,
they can also be set at symbols, like function names or labels. For all
practical purposes, you can set an unlimited number of Address Breakpoints,
which are stored in a viewable breakpoint table. Including a skip count in
an Address Breakpoint command, allows the source line to be executed one or
more times before the breakpoint is taken. Finally, Address Breakpoints
also allow you to specify a sequence of SDB commands that will
automatically be executed when a particular breakpoint is hit.
There is also a single Expression Breakpoint that will halt execution when
a specified C expression ("loop_count == 0", for example) becomes TRUE
(non-zero). As far as I can tell, only one Expression Breakpoint may be
set at a time, but the documentation on the Expression Breakpoint is very
weak and badly organized, so this may not actually be the case. The
operation of Expression Breakpoints varies, depending on how program
execution was started. If the progam was started with the 'g' (go)
command, the expression is only evaluated upon entry to and return from
function calls. Thus, it is only possible for the program to be halted at
these points. However, if the program is being single stepped, the
expression is evaluated after each line is executed. In this case,
execution will stop after the source line that caused the expression to
become TRUE. Fortunately, the command "0s" (single step command with a
zero repeat count) causes the debugger to single step continuously until
the Expression Breakpoint or any other breakpoint is hit or the program
terminates. Thus, Expression Breakpoints can be used within functions as
well across multiple functions. This is a far cry from CodeView's arsenal
of Watch Points and Trace Points but, it's definately better than nothing.
Two other 'b' commands are used to toggle the two Trace Modes on and off.
Call Trace Mode (bt) will print the names and arguments of each function in
the program as it is called. When the function returns its return value is
printed. In Source Line Trace Mode (bT), each source line is displayed
before it is executed. I have never found a use for this second trace
mode, since the source lines wiz by very fast.
Finally, there are also 'b' commands for resetting the breakpoint skip
counters, clearing all breakpoints and viewing the breakpoint table.
Display Commands
----------------
Commands beginning with 'd' display the contents of a memory location or
range of memory locations as bytes, 16-bit words or 32-bit words. There
are other display commands that display ALL of a program's code symbols,
data symbols or global symbols. These commands are best used with SDB's
output redirected to a printer or a disk file, since they can generate
a huge amount of output. They can be very useful for taking a snapshot
of the state of the program. Two "Stack Backtrace" (ds and dS) commands
produce a formatted dump of all of the active function calls and the
arguments that were passed to those functions and the functions' automatic
variables. Finally, the "df" command is used for displaying different
sections of the source file(s).
Frame Commands
--------------
The two 'f' commands allow you examine the automatic variables of
functions that are in the chain of called functions but are not currently
being executed. Normally, SDB only allows you to examine C variables that
are visable according to the C scope rules in effect when execution halted.
The Frame commands allow you to move up and down the chain of called
functions to view variables that would otherwise be unknown within the
current scope. In addition, SDB displays the source code for the currently
selected function at the point where it made the call to the next function
in the chain.
Go Command
----------
The two versions of the Go command begin execution of the program.
Exexution proceeds until a breakpoint is hit or the program terminates. The
Go command allows a temporary breakpoint that remains active only during
the life of that Go command. Thus "g .57" would allow the program to
execute until line 57 of the current source file is reached or until one
of the permanent breakpoints is hit. Saying "G .57" would cause the
program to ignore the permanent breakpoints and stop only when line 57 was
reached or the program terminated. Finally, the go command recognizes '@' as
a special argument, which tells it to execute the program until the
current function returns.
Print command
-------------
The 'p' command is the simplest, most complex, most powerful, most
unfathomable and most error prone feature of SDB. Fifteen percent of the
manual is consumed trying to explain the operation and options of this one
command. Basically, the 'p' command will display the value of any variable
in your program according to its data type, including entire structures.
The command allows overriding the data type of the variable, displaying,
for example, UBYTEs as char's or vice versa. The print command is also
very flexible in its manipulation of pointers. For example, it's possible
to print the first 5 elements of an array, using a pointer to a pointer to
the array as the argument to the 'p' command. I was amazed to discover
that the following print command worked just fine, dumping out the entire
Task structure.
p *(struct Task *)0x2bd0a0
I don't recall the manual mentioning doing neat casts like that.
Unfortunately, in the initial release, this command seems to have a number
of bugs. Even if there weren't any bugs the flexibility of this command
means that you have to be VERY careful how you use it. The 'p' command
will usually display what is requested, but it is easy to request for
something other than what is wanted.
Evaluation command
------------------
The 'e' command allow evaluate complex C expressions, including ones that
include function calls. The only limitation on the use of function calls
is that they must have been linked into the program being debugged.
Macro command
-------------
The 'x' command allows you to define and use SDB command macros, which are
alot like Amiga DOS execute/batch files. These macros simply save time and
effort and reduce input errors by allowing you to enter a sequences of SDB
commands once and then execute them by invoking the macro name. Macros
defined during a debug session may be saved on disk and reused in
subsequent sessions.
Other commands
--------------
The Memory Modification ('m') Commands allow modification, comparison,
filling, moving and searching regions of memory.
The Single Step commands ('s' and 't') allows the execution of a program
one source line or one function call at time. The 's' commands steps
into function calls. The 't' commands step over function calls -
executing them as a single source line.
SDB supports a couple of kinds of I/O redirection. The '<' can read and
execute a file of SDB commands. The '>>' command creates a log file of the
commands entered. These log files can be used either for reference or
they can be feed back into SDB as redirected input. The '>' command logs
all input (commands) and outputs (responses) to a file, providing a
complete record of a debugging session.
THE MANUAL
==========
The 60 page small format manual is often clear and concise. "Often" is not
good enough! The more I try to use the SDB manual, the more annoyed I get
at it. It falls far short of the high standards of documentation set by
the Aztec C Compiler manual. The SDB manual was VERY badly proof read and
contains a large number of typos and outright errors. At worst, these
errors totally destroy the information that the manual is trying to convey.
Like almost all manuals, the SDB manual could use many more examples. It
also needs a "Technical Info" section that describes how running in
conjunction with SDB effects the program being debugged. There isn't one
word in the manual about how SDB does what it does and the possible
consequences. The SDB disk comes with a couple of tutorial/demos that,
unfortunately, do little to clear up the confusion caused by the errors and
omissions in the manual. When I last talked to Manx Technical Support in
April, they said that the manual was being rewritten for the next release.
Better late than never.
BUGS
====
Considering that this is the initial release of a fairly sophisticated
product, SDB is surprisingly bug free. Most of the bugs that I've run
across are in the Print (p) command. First of all, the command does not
work correctly with multidimentional arrays. For example, in two
dimentional arrays, SDB always considers the row index to be zero. Thus,
"p array[0][5]" and "p array[1][5]" produce the same result, namely the
contents of array[0][5]. The 'p' command also seems to ocationally kick
the command line editor from insert mode into typeover mode for no apparent
reason. This is only a minor annoyance since the ESC key will toggle it
back. I have had other difficulties with some of the more complex
variations of the print command. These may be bugs but, I'm not sure. At
the risk of repeating myself, I'll warn you again: "BE VERY CAREFUL WHEN
USING THE VER 3.6a SDB PRINT COMMAND". If it gives you a screwy looking
result, the problem may be SDB's and not your program's.
I haven't experienced this problem but, Manx says that SDB can not display
numbers that are in the Motorola Fast Floating Point format.
I suspect that there are other bugs lurking in SDB. For example, on one
ocation, a simple 'db' (display bytes) command resulted in the screen
going blank, forcing a reboot of the Amiga. I have no idea what happened.
OTHER COMPLAINTS
================
The following two problems aren't really bugs but, they have seriously
reduced the usefullness of SDB in a couple of real world situations. One
of my pet programs requires a quoted string as a command line argument, as
in:
1> prog_name "This is a single argument."
The standard Manx startup code handles this situation just fine. The
program's main() routine receives an argc of 2. argv[1] points to a buffer
that contains the entire string minus the double quotes. This is NOT the
case when using SDB. The CLI line:
1> sdb prog_name "This is a single argument."
results in main() receiving an argc equal to 6 and each word of the string
is stored in a separate buffer with its own argv pointer. Oddly enough,
MicroSoft C and CodeView exibit the same inconsistancy.
Finally, I suspect that there is a class of SDB problems involving
interactions at the system level between SDB and the program being
debugged. These problems will probably only be encountered by programs
that are super sensitive to their environment. For example, I'm working
on a program that needs all of its task's application signal bits. It
turns out that SDB and the target program are run as a single task/process
and thus have to share task resources. Unfortunately, SDB allocates one
signal for its own use. After all, SDB has got to have a "UserPort" IDCMP,
right? This isn't unreasonable, I guess, but it is totally undocumented
and, in this case, kills my program. Ideally SDB would run as a separate
task. I haven't even begun to think through the implications of a separate
task approach. However, a guy at Manx told me that he thought that SDB was
designed to be part of the same task as the test progam "for performance
reasons". There is at least one advantage to the current design - I was
initially surprised to discover that breakpoints worked when multitasking
is disabled by a Forbid() function call. If SDB and the test program were
running as separate tasks, this might well present a problem.
In general, there is no documentation on how SDB does what it does. There
is no discussion of how SDB alters your program's operating environment or
what resources it consumes.
SUMMARY
=======
The burning question that I have been trying to answer for myself these
past few months is: "Is Manx's SDB as good as MicroSoft's CodeView Source
Level Debugger?" In my personal opinion, the answer is no. I find SDB
easier to use than CodeView. SDB provides most of the debugging features
that CodeView does but, the ones SDB doesn't provide are significant. For
example, the Watch, WatchPoint and TracePoint commands of CodeView are far
superior to anything SDB currently offers.
At the time of this writting, the Manx Source Level Debugger lists for
$75.00. It requires that programs be compiled and linked with version 3.6a
of the Aztec C compiler, which can be bought in one of two packages. The
Professional System lists for $199.00 and the Developer System lists for
$299.00. The Commercial System is no longer offered. As a Version 3.4a
Commercial System owner, I was able to upgrade my compiler and buy the
debugger for a about $80.00 plus another $20.00 because I couldn't be
bothered to mail the upgrade distribution disks back to Manx after I copied
them.
In the final analysis, I am satisifed with the initial release of SDB and,
recommend it to anyone doing even casual C language programming with Aztec
C. The first release of SDB has several bugs, bad documentation and some
other limitations but, after using SDB successfully with at least some
programs, I cringe when the situation forces me to debug without it.
==========================================================================
Fujitsu DL3400 24 pin color Dot Matrix Printer
Fujitsu America, Inc.
3055 Orchard Drive
San Jose, CA 95134 - Telephone: (408) 946-8777
Retail $500 color upgrade $80
By Mark D. Manes
The DL3400 is probably one of the best quality 24 pin printers currently
on the market. Its best features are its very sturdy construction that will
assure durability, and provisions for many printer emulations, and color
printing with an optional upgrade.
The Fujitsu DL3400 has not been given a lot of attention, even though I think it
is one of the nicest printers that has come to market. Its speed is rated
at 240 CPS at 10 CPI in high-speed draft quality mode, 180 CPS at 10 CPI in
Draft quality mode, and 60 CPS at 10 CPI in LETTER quality. Note the term
LETTER quality, as opposed to nine pin printers with "near letter quality."
The printer features a 24k download area for either fonts or print buffer.
Fujitsu makes optional font cards, that sell for about $40 apiece. The printer has five
built in fonts, Courier 10, Prestige Elite 12, Draft, High Speed Draft, and
Compression.
The printer allows for tractor or cut sheet feed paper. It is not necesary
to pull the tractor paper off when you want to put single sheets in. Both
can be loaded at the same time! The printer also knows when it hasn't
printed on a sheet of paper, and if so desired will automatically back up
and reload the paper. It's also very easy to line the top line of the
paper up with the printhead, something I've had difficulties with on other
printers.
The printer has no dip switches! All functions can be controlled
and placed in non-volilitable memory from the control panel. The printer
remembers two complete setups so changing form letter quality to color, or
color to draft is just a push of a button away!
Fujitsu feels that this is a very durable product, so durable that they
publish the Mean Time Between Failure. The DL3400 is rated at 5,000 hours
at 40% load. Rather impressive! It _is_ built solidly - so solidly, in
fact, that it's quieter than most dot matrixes.
The number of printer emulations is very very impressive. The list
includes:
Diablo 630
FUJITSU/DL2400/COLOR (with color option installed)
FUJITSU/DL2400
FUJITSU/DL24C (with color option installed)
FUJITSU/DotMax 24C (with color option installed)
FUJITSU/DPL241
FUJITSU/DotMax 241
IBM Proprinter XL
IBM Graphics
EPSON JX-80 (with color option installed)
EPSON FX-80
The color upgrade is worth every penny. It is user installable, and works
with a four color ribbon. The graphics of this printer are most
impressive when they are hooked to a IBM PC clone (more on that in a
second). The colors are vivid and not washed out.
Ribbons must be Fujitsu ribbons, though they are pretty easy to find where
I live, but could be a drawback out in the country. Black and white
ribbons sell for about $10, and color ribbons are about $18. Color ribbons
are good for about fifteen pictures before they fade noticeably.
The printer is flexible - it alleviates my need for daisy wheel print
because of the very high print quality of text in letter quality mode. The
speed is there when I just want program listings or long reports. The fact
that I do not have to pull the tractor feed paper out when I want to
load an envelope or a cut sheet paper just makes me scream. The control
panel, though complex at first, is very simple to navigate.
There is a fairly serious drawback with this printer, however. Commodore
only supports it as a nine-pin printer in graphics modes (both black and
white and color.) The Epson JX-80 is a 9 pin printer, the one that the
Fujitsu does emulate and must be selected under WorkBench. Unfortunately
Commodore-Amiga has chosen not to include the DPL24C emulation in 1.3. When
the Fujitsu does graphics using the 9 pin drivers the graphics have very
tiny lines rolling through them. This is very displeasing to the eye.
The epson emulation has the same problem in black and white. This makes
the graphics dumps from the Amiga look less than wonderful when printed on
the DL3400. This problem has been stomped on the PC clones, most graphics
programs for the PC now include the DPL24 emulation.
All in all, I love the printer, it is well engineered, works as expected,
the documentation is great, and the color upgrade is simple to install.
As soon as the world finds out about this printer, there should be a
driver. If you want a nice high quality long lasting printer, and dont
mind a delay in getting full graphics support from Commodore-Amiga, then
the Fujitsu DL3400 is your printer!
==========================================================================
Macintosh Emulator for Amiga?
--Henry Colonna
David Small, the originator of the Magic Sac Apple Macintosh emulator for
the Atari ST reports that a hole in the memory map of the Amiga has
prevented the Magic Sac from emulating anything more than a 256K
Macintosh. There isn't much software that runs in that environment, so
the Magic Sac Amiga is not a viable product at this time.
However, things could change when chip RAM is boosted to one meg.
Whenever this happens, Mr. Small would like to return to the Amiga Magic
Sac project, barring any supply problem with the Macintosh ROMs. A user
needs to buy the official Apple ROMs in addition to the Magic Sac package,
and so far there have been plenty of 64K ROMs available from Mac users
upgrading to the 128K chipset.
Realistically, the Amiga Magic Sac is at least a long way off. The
one-meg chips for the Amiga aren't going to appear for at least for many
months, and then it will take awhile for David Small to finish the
project. Currently, Mr. Small is already involved in some other
time-consuming project, and there is still no guarantee on the continued
supply of the ROMs. Amiga 1000 owners will not be able to run the Magic
Sac Amiga if it shows up, since the computer does not have the necessary
circuitry to run the one meg graphics chips from Commodore. For these
reasons, I have little hope for actual production of the Amiga Magic Sac.
I would be pleased if I were wrong.
==========================================================================
UEdit News
--Henry Colonna
UEdit is a powerful text editor that has been available on the pay networks
and bulletin boards for quite some time. Registration with the author
costs $45 at this address (in case this information is missing):
Rick Stiles, P O Box 666, Washington, IN 47501, (812) 254-4986
The newest version is V2.3h, and includes ARexx support and full
customization options for the user, in addition to other changes. Here's
a list of what ARexx does for UEdit:
"Ed out buffer" Edit ARexx output buffer (buffer 36).
"Ed in buffer" Edit ARexx input buffer (buffer 35).
"Out-)Rexx" Send output buffer to ARexx.
"In(-Rexx" Fetch ARexx input into input buffer.
"Hilite-)Rexx" Send hilite region to ARexx.
"Cursor(-Rexx" Fetch ARexx input at cursor in current buffer.
"Reply OKAY-)" Send OKAY reply to last message.
"Reply text-)" Send OKAY reply plus hilited text to last msg (if incoming
message asked for a text result).
"Auto-traffic" Toggle auto-traffic mode. If auto-traffic mode is ON, the
idle command handles all ARexx traffic.
"Make x.rexx" Create an ARexx program to send inputs to Uedit.
A spelling checker is also available for registered users. Rick has made
strong efforts to keep UEdit current and provide users with one of the best
text editors available for the Amiga. I don't mean for this to be an
advertisement, but shareware has been a marginally successful method of
marketing software. If you're using UEdit, this is one author who
deserves support for his efforts.
==========================================================================
Using WordPerfect with HP LaserJet
[This message comes to us courtesy of CompuServe's AmigaForum and Roger Becker.]
Sb: #131409-HP Laserjet Fonts
Fm: Roger F. Becker 71426,1053
To: Bill Leach 71330,2621
bill:
Well, first of all, WP gave you a bum steer. You should create a new
driver (select Create from the drop down menu) based on one of the HP Soft
drivers. The font selection string in the Cartridge-based drivers is
different than the ones used in the soft font-based drivers. Choose one of
the drivers that are set up for the 8 fonts you'd like to use. Then,
replace the font tables in that driver with your MakeWP tables. Be sure
to match the fonts already in the driver with the C Font equivelants
(i.e., replace Helvetica 10pt with HVP10). The reason for this is that
instead of selecting fonts by their ID Number (which WP doesn't know or
want to know about), the font selection strings in these drivers select
fonts by their attributes. So, the string will say, in effect, 'Gimme
something nice in a 10 point helvetica, eh?'. The font file header
contains info to that effect and the printer picks the closest match (or
uses one of the internals as a last ditch).
Let me know if this is any help.
Roger
==========================================================================
The Phoenix PFD-135 External Disk Drive
--Henry Colonna
I jumped on the opportunity to buy a used Amiga 1000 several months ago,
and when I did everyone I knew who owned an Amiga was telling me to buy a
second disk drive along with the computer. I kept thinking "nah,
Commodore sells them with one drive, it'll be OK." Within two hours of
actually using the computer, I was desparate for a second drive. However,
I had spent just about all the money I had, and simply could not afford a
second Commodore disk drive. I did some shopping around, and noticed that
a company named Phoenix was selling a less-expensive alternative to
Commodore's external disk drive.
When the drive arrived, I was disappointed to find a ribbon cable on the
back instead of a regular cable. Everyone in the store was snickering
behind my back that this drived used "older ribbon cable" technology, which
supposedly produces more RFI interference than normal cables. However, in
real-life use I have had no problems with the disk drive, and the next
shipment of drives had normal cables, and every shipment since then.
The drive is smaller than the Commodore drive, though it is a bit longer.
It is very thin and short, making it physically attractive.
After several months of use I have found that it runs admirable under all
conditions, with one potentially serious drawback that I will describe in a
second. During multitasking, the drive gets noiser and seems to rattle, but
is usually alot quieter even after heavy use than the Commodore drives.
It was a bit disconcerting during my first multitask to hear the drive
rattle louder, however, it is performing normally besides the sound.
The potentially serious drawback of this disk drive is the way that the
"busy" light on the drive works. It does not stay on steadily, for some
reason it blinks during disk accesses. The blinking does not become a
problem except during DOS operations or during ARC operations. Often the
drive light will shut off for a good second or two and then come back on
again. Removing the disk during that period when the drive light is off
will result in a trashed disk. I trashed many disks at first before I
realized what was happening with the drive light. Fortunately they were
all recoverable in every way with the shareware program "ÐiskSalv", but
the operation of the drive light may be a serious drawback.
I have noticed that the Commodore drives behave occasionally in this
fashion, but the Phoenix does it much more often.
When I was pondering this review I was considering giving it a "damning"
review because of the problem I mentioned above. However, upon careful
thought I reconsidered. Many people trash many disks with the Commodore
disk drive at first and if anything would learn their lesson quicker. Yes,
I know, that's bordering on warped logic, but what can I say.
Overall, because of the $20 to $40 savings and the 1 year warranty
(compared to Commodore's 90 day warranty) and flawless, quiet performance
I would give the drive a cautious nod. If saving that amount of money is
of little consequence, get the real thing.
==========================================================================
Ports of Call
A Maritime Simulation
(Review c. 1988 Bill Eastburn)
Amid all the Dungeons & Dragons, flight simulators, arcades, mazes,
etc., there appears from time to time a game that can capture the interest
of those of us not really interested in the mundane world of computer
gaming as it currently exists. Such a game is Aegis' Ports of Call.
Ports of Call tries to allow the player to enter the world of tramp
steamer captains and shipping magnates. In a large measure, it does
succeed in its goal. It is by no means perfect, but is good enough to hold
your interest for hours at a time.
The game is played on an Amiga with over 512K of memory, no doubt
because the graphics, which set a standard to be emulated in future games,
just flat take up so much room. As long as you have the required memory,
your Amiga system and the boxed game provide you with all the tools needed
to play.
The game starts out by providing you a $5 million stake, from which
you must buy a ship, pay tug fees, normal operating overhead, and try to
make a few bucks on the side. Depending on your luck or skill, you can
parley the initial stake into a fleet of hundreds of ships, worth billions
of dollars, or lose the whole mess to your creditors.
Starting Out
Inserting the game disk into the drive on your Amiga, you get all the
normal whirs, grinds, crunches, and other noise associated with loading a
workbench disk. (It is a workbench disk, and if you need to run a
kickstart disk first, presumably it will give you the familiar "Insert
Kickstart...." message on older machines.) You run into two title screens,
one proclaiming the authors and artists, the other a regular title. Then,
you are asked to enter your registration number. Take it off the
registration card (which you should mail to Aegis when you get done
recording the number) and enter it from the keyboard. The program writes
the number to the disk, and it is forever personalized with your name and
license number. Subsequent games skip over the registration part.
Copy protection is done by asking questions from the manual that comes
with the game. It always asks questions, and gives you two tries to come
up with the right answer. Keep the manual handy!
Now, we finally get around to the game setup. You are asked how many
players you are going to have (maximum 4), the duration of play and for you
to choose the name of a shipping company and captain's name for each
player. It doesn't matter what duration you select, as the game will ask
if you want to extend the time frame when it is exceeded and the game
doesn't change any to compensate for a shorter than "To end of game"
selection. Then you are asked to pick a home port. There are a number of
choices, and the game will then show you on the map which one you have
selected. Clicking on the OK selector box here finally gets you into the
playing area.
The playing area is a screen with a map, a clock, a big box marked
"Start" and a line of other boxes along the right hand side for going to
your office, buying ships, checking on ships locations, etc. Look around
at all the options before clicking on the "Start" box. You probably won't
want to begin the game without a ship or seeing what kinds of things are
offered at the office. My suggestion is to look around the office, then go
to the ship brokers and buy a ship before clicking "Start."
Boats
Since this is a maritime simulation, it deals with boats. (Ships are
boats that can hold other boats.) I guess you could run the game without
buying a boat, but it wouldn't be too much fun. So you need to go to the
ship broker (click on the appropriate gadget.)
A masterful screen showing a building facade and an elevator appears.
The elevator doors open, and you are provided with a directory to select
which floor you want to go to.
Forget the first floor. That's the "consultant" floor, and nobody is
ever there. Presumably, it is either there to make you ask questions, or
it was designed for a purpose and never implemented.
The second floor is the "seller's market." Until you have a ship or
two that you want to sell, it doesn't do you much good either.
The remaining three floors contain ships for sail, from rusty scows
through large, modern vessels. With your initial stake, you can afford one
small modern vessel (on mortgage), one previously owned medium ship (on
mortgage), one medium junker (outright purchase) or two small junkers
(outright purchase.) Your choice here sets the tone of the game. (I pick
a used medium ship, complete with mortgage.)
Your selection is, of course, your own choice. Consider, however,
that a small ship, either brand new, used, or a piece of rust, just won't
haul much cargo. It is really difficult to make money by picking a small
ship. Having decided on a medium sized ship, selecting a used, low milage
ship (driven only be aged school teachers to church on Sundays) will hold
up a lot better than a junk ship. The low cost ships come just about ready
to sink, and deteriorate from there. One used medium ship is the best
choice to even try to make a go of the game. (You will have enough money
to buy 2 used mediums ships, but that will cost every penny of your stake
and you won't be able to buy fuel, tug charges or pay your crew. Don't
fall into the trap of going for two of them.)
Exit the shipbrokers, and go to your office. You will notice that the
banner at the office now proclaims you have a ship, some cash and a status
point. Exit the office and return to the playing field. We are now ready
to click the "Start" box!
Sailing, Sailing
Well, not quite yet. The simulation will now eat up two days,
obviously simulating the time it takes lawyers to get rich off licensing,
registration, taxes, etc.
Now we can finally do something about making money. That is the whole
purpose of the game, isn't it? We get a requester asking us to charter,
refuel, repair, lay up, or load. Hmmmmm. Well, the whole idea of shipping
is to take something from one place to another for a fee, so I guess
Charter is a pretty good choice.
You are now presented with a list of destinations and charter rates.
Pick the one you are most interested in (likely the one on which you can
make the most money.) If you need fuel, get it before clicking the LOAD
gadget. (You can also choose to repair your ship (for a fee), or sit idle
(lay up) at this point.)
It will take several days (simulated) to load your cargo. Remember
this fact, because it will figure into your calculations as to whether you
can profitably assume a timed charter. At the end of the loading time,
take the ship to sea by hand. If you choose going by hand, you are placed
in an arcade situation where you must get the ship out of the harbor by
clicking the mouse on speed and rudder controls - and possibly crashing
into piers. Either way, once you get out of the harbor, you have to select
a speed (another slider gadget). Your choice of speed will affect fuel
consumption and overhead cost of the ship - obviously affecting the
profitability of the trip.
Now all that remains is to wait for the ship to steam to its
destination, where the process is reversed, and collect your charter fee.
Well -- almost all that remains.
Hazards
Hazards are arcade situations, where you must navigate past icebergs,
shoals, reefs, rescue people from life rafts or weather storms. Not all
journeys meet hazards, but most of them do. Most hazards only affect your
status points, though storms affect sailing time, and you can run into
icebergs, reefs or shoals and damage your ship. The other hazard is a
radar warning of approaching ships. You can run into the other ship and
damage your own.
Honesty - the best policy
From time to time, you will be asked to smuggle boxes for various
amounts of cash. Sometimes you win, sometimes you get caught with fingers
in the till. If you get caught, sometimes you can bribe your way out of
it, sometimes you get impounded. It's best not to indulge (especially with
only one ship) since you can't make money while you are impounded.
Continuing
Basically, the game continues as already described. You can stop
almost any time to buy more ships, pay off mortgages, raise credit, etc.
The game continues until you go broke, if you do.
Strong Points
Now that we have described the game play, we can begin describing the
good and the bad.
The big strength of this game is it's graphics. Most of the graphics
are outstanding. Some of the gadgets aren't all that realistic, but the
graphics are very strong.
As a relatively off beat subject, the game will hold your interest for
some time. Really - when was the last time you saw any other game about
tramp steamers?
Bugs, Features and other crawly critters
Mostly, the game is good. There were a few things that drove me up a
wall, particularly after playing for a while.
- You have to buy each ship individually, going through up to a
half dozen requesters for each, whether you have the money and desire
to buy a fleet or not.
- You must dispose of everthing in one port at one time. For
example, if you have six ships enter a port at the same time, you have
to offload, refuel and recharter all six before doing anything else,
including saving the game or getting more credit to pay tug fees, fuel
costs, etc.
- Sometimes, the game goes into a loop while you are impounded for
smuggling where you are unable to move, yet you get radar hazards and
get to pay bribes over and over and over.
- The game forces you to sail the ship manually into or out of
ports at its discretion. Can you imaging Aristotle Onasis having to
fly to every port in which he has a ship to drive it into or out of
the harbor manually? (This could be a hint that the game authors want
to cut down on the number of shipping magnates worldwide!)
- It is irritiating to have six or seven ships in a harbor, get
half of them out with tugs and find that the tug crews went on strike
for one ship, but are back on duty for the next one. Totally
inconsistent! The game should be locked to strike or no-strike for an
entire day in the individual port.
- Radar warning hazards are obviously based on a random number
generator, and come whether you are laying up in port, on the high
seas, impounded or wherever.
- The manual does not deal with saving liferafts, the fact that
your office crew is dishonest and you have to keep tabs on them as
well as your ships, etc. You are in limbo on lots of things that
happen in the game if you are just starting out and depending on the
manual.
- By and large, ship movements are consistent with momentum, BUT
clicking either full on or full off causes steerage to run at that
speed, whether the ship is up to speed or not. (Handy for getting in
and out of tight spots, but not really consistent with ships
movement.)
- The steering/speed gadgets can and do slip from steering to speed
without notice. You should have to release the button, at least, to
switch from one to the other. I crash ships more by having the
steering changed by slipping off the speed control than all other ways
put together.
Overall
Fault lists might make you think I didn't really like the game. The
contrary is true. Ports of Call is well worth the $49.95 that Aegis asks
for it. I wish it had a few more features, like a "Onasis mode", and that
it introduced different situations from time to time instead of simply
repeating the same few over an over, but overall it is a good game for
gamers and other folks as well.
==========================================================================
*******************************************************************************
- Slight Advertisement and Pat on the Back Department -
When you read about WordPerfect Library and the commercial release of Amic in
paper magazines toward the end of 1988, remember that you first read about it in
Amy Report in July
*******************************************************************************
==========================================================================
WORDPERFECT LIBRARY
===================
by Henry Colonna
WordPerfect Library is a collection of five very different and
flexible utilities with varying value. The programs included in the
colection are a calculator with programmer's, scientific, and financial
functions, a calendar with alarm program for making appointments and
organizing the day, a notebook that functions as a simple database with
phone dialer, PEdit, a text editor that is a faster,smaller, and stripped
WordPerfect with some unique features of its own, and File Manager, a file
manipulation utility along the lines of CLI-mate and many public domain
offerings. I will treat each program as a separate entity in this review
and offer what I feel would be a reasonable value for the program if sold
by itself. All the bigger products (NoteBook, Calendar, and Program
Editor) offer WordPerfect Corporation's excellent help facility, which
includes alphabetical listing and explanation of commands and more
detailed descriptions of the function of each keystroke. Of course,
Library is in no way or form copy-protected, and comes with WordPerfect
Corporation's excellent toll-free customer support. Towards the end we'll
see what the total is and therefore what kind of value the $129 Library
package really is.
Calculator
----------
Library's calculator fills about 35 to 40 percent of a normal
non-interlaced screen. Buttons when pressed visually move when depressed
as a normal calculator's would. The numbers on the calculator's display
are very large - roughly twice the size of the standard topaz font. There
are three modes, that are toggled by clicking on the large letters next to
the numeric display. The letters read "Programmer", "Scientific", and
"Financial." The calculator functions in either algebraic or RPN (Reverse
Polish Notation), and the manual clearly expains the differences in the
two methods for data entry. Scientific and Engineering modes are also
available, along with options to fix the decimal point, up to 100 memory
registers with a window to view them all. The stack can also be
displayed, with pushing, popping, rolling, swapping, storing and
recalling. Financial registers are used in the calculations of financial
formulas. All registers can be saved to floppy. Up to 14 decimal place
precision is available. I'll list the features of the three different
modes part by part. Calculator allows the separation of digits with
punctuations (commas or periods) depending on whether US or European modes
are set.
Scientific
Hours - converts format of the number from hours-minutes-seconds-decimal
seconds to decimal hours.
Percent change calculates the percent of change between two numbers.
Percent - computes the specified percentage.
Pi
Square root
Inverse - computes the reciprocal.
Common Antilogarithm
Absolute Value
Cosine
Inverse cosine
Degrees - set degrees mode for trigonometric calculations.
Engineering mode (all numbers are displayed with an exponent that is a
multiple of 3.
Natural Antilogarithm
Exponents
Fix decimal point.
Replaces a number with its fractional portion.
Gradians - set gradians mode for trigonometric caclulations.
Hyperbolic - computes hyperbolic trigonometric functions.
Integer Portion - Replaces a number with its integer portion.
Natural Logarithm
Logarithm
Polar to Rectangular - converts rectangular coordinates to polar
ones.
Rectangular to Polar - converts polar coordinates to rectangular ones.
Radians - sets radians mode for trigonometric calculations.
Round - rounds number to specified number of decimal places.
Scientific - sets display mode to scientific notation.
Sine
Inverse Sine
Tangent
Inverse Tangent
Factorial
Square
Power
Inverse power
Degrees-minutes-seconds - converts format of number from decimal hours
to hours-degrees-minutes-seconds.
Programmer
High Order Word
Low Order Word
One's Complement
Two's Complement
Logical AND
Arithmetic Shift Right - shifts number one bit right.
BIN - changes display to binary mode.
Clear bit - sets specified bit to zero.
DEC - changes display to decimal mode.
HEX - changes display to hexadecimal mode.
Left Justify - left justifies number and tells number of bit-shifts
necessary.
MOD - calculates integer remainder.
NOT
OCT - changes display to octal mode.
OR - calculates bit-wise inclusive OR.
Rotate Left n Bits - rotates the number specified number of bits.
Rotate Right - rotates the number right one bit.
Rotate Right n Bits - rotates number specified number of bits.
Set bit - sets specified bit to one.
Shift left - shifts number left one bit.
Shift right - shifts number right one bit.
Unsign - switches between signed and unsigned modes.
XOR - calculates the bit-wise exclusive or.
Financial
Financial registers - Number of Periods, Interest Rate, Present Value
or Principal Amount, Future Value, Payment Amount, Cost, Selling
Price, and Profit Margin are used in financial calculations.
Percent change - calculates the percent change between 2 numbers.
Percent
Interest Rate
Percent of Total
Square Root
Inverse Number
Per Month - divides number by twelve for "monthly" amount.
Per Year - multiplies number by twelve
Amortize - calculates amount being applied to principal and interest,
and tells remaining balance of loan.
Annuities - calculates the series of regular payments made with
compound or simple interest.
Begin/End - sets whether payments are made at beginning or end of a
period.
Clear Financial Registers - sets them to zero.
Compound Interest - toggle for computing either simple or compound
interest during a period.
Cost - stores number in financial register for Cost.
Depreciation Value - Straight-Line, Sum-of-the-Years-Digits,
Declining Balance
Exponent support
Fix decimal point
Fractional portion
Future Value
Simple Interest
Integer Portion
Profit Margin Calculations
Rounding
Factorial
Squaring
Inverse Power
Power
Calculator Summary
------------------
Calculator in its current version will guru the 512K owner under
the scientific notation and engineering modes - a nasty and serious
drawback.
Calculator offers alot to the user who needs a complex calculator.
There are dozens of important and complex mathmatical features, and
Calculator fullfills the need for a complex calculator for the serious
user. I conducted a very informal survey with two mathematicians who use
calculators extensively by listing the features and describing the
program, without giving the name of the product or who made it. They each
estimated that Calculator was worth $50 to them. However, 512K users beware.
File Manager
============
File Manager is WordPerfect Corporation's entry into the
disk-utility, WorkBench/CLI hybrids most exemplified by Progressive
Peripheral's CLI-Mate and dozens of free public domain utilities. File
Manager has strong competition that has been around for awhile, and is
competing with free, public domain software. For these reasons, to be a
good value File Manager should offer all of what the public domain
programs offer and then provide some new and innovative features itself.
File Manager does not, and is easily the weakest part of the
Library package. It does provide all of the standard DOS functions like
delete, rename, print (using the famous WordPerfect PRINT program), look
at ASCII files, copy, and some flexible mark routines for multiple
operations (like copy and delete.) Status lines at the bottom display the
total number of bytes in a directory, the number of files, the amount of
free bytes remaining, and and number of bytes taken by the marked files.
File Manager does have some unique twists to its credit. The
directory can be sorted by name, size, or date, and supports WordPerfect's
traditionally excellent "word search" and date search routines. File
Manager will go through files looking for a specified word and highlight
those files that contain it, and find files with the specified time/date
stamp. This could be especially valuable to hard drive owners, and to
artists with directories full of fonts and/or brushes. It also displays
both physical and logical buttons to access directories. The look
function will go backwards, a wonderful function that I've found very
useful. File Manager is also very solid and takes up little memory since
it's written in assembly. I also love WordPerfect Corporation's zoom
gadget that appears in all of their products - it makes it very easy to
call up File Manager and then make it sit in the background again.
File Manager also handles some things better than the
public-domain or shareware utilities do. There are repeating arrows on
the scroll bars, and after marking files and performing an operation, the
highlights do not disappear. By holding the left mouse button and moving
the mouse, the highlight will spread to adjoining files without the need to
click each file.
The scroll bar is absolutely bizarre. The arrows repeat, and it's
quick, but when a window is full of file names and there are no more, the
scroll bar is half-empty. This causes problems when actually clicking on
the empty part of the container to move the scroll bar as it's
unpredictable and illogical where the highlight will land.
The problem, though, is that File Manager should do much more. It
doesn't support user-definable buttons for arc, zoo, or viewing IFF
pictures or listening to digitized sounds. It won't keep the time/date
stamp the same (it should have an option to do so.) File Manager only
shows one directory on the window, while most of the public domain
utilities will display two. It does not have a "move" feature either.
File Manager is worth, at best (considering the support that
WordPerfect Corp. gives with all their products) $10. To most it's
probably worth $0.
Program Editor
==============
Library's Program Editor (called PEdit from here on out) at first
appears to be a stripped version of WordPerfect itself. However, upon
closer examination it has its own unique features for source-code editing
and quick dirty text editing. These include hex edit, literal entry of
decimal values, more flexible cut and past routines (including a new
"clone" option), quick and easy auto-indenting and un-indenting, and quick
copying of line numbers.
Other improvements include a very quick and easy way to set tabs,
and the ability to turn off the scroll bar updating for quicker
scrolling. The improvement in the rate of the scroll is noticeable.
Speaking of scroll bars, this one almost works the way it should work, but
still doesn't quite make it. The arrows repeat on the top and bottom of
the bar, but the size and location of the slider does still jump
erratically in position during movement. Because of that, PEdit overall
feels more "Amiga-like" WordPerfect does, but I wish someone would give
these guys a lesson on how an Amiga slider is _supposed_ to work.
The block function in PEdit can be used to mark non-continuous
blocks of text (or source code) referred to as "multiple blocks" upon
which the operations (cutting, pasting, moving, and cloning) are effected.
PEdit also retains the powerful WordPerfect features of inserting
date into the text, using an extremely flexible format of inserting the
date using any combination of words or numbers in any order. PEdit
retains the powerful macro abilities of WordPerfect for automating
repetitive tasks.
A discussion recently arose on one of the networks over the real
value of a text editor. If a user owns a powerful wordprocessor, why
should he need a stripped-down text editor? Two very clear reasons came
across in the discussion. First of all, most of us as Amiga owners (with
the current prices of RAM at least) don't have 8 megs yet, and a text
editor is much smaller in size than a real wordprocessor. This makes a
text editor much easier to multitask, lurking in the background for
whatever editing job is necessary. With the proper public domain program,
like SNIPIT, text can be easily copied and pasted in between windows for
editing. Secondly, text editors generally store their text in a much
purer ASCII form than wordprocessors, so editing text that doesn't really
need to go to a wordprocessor is generally much easier. Examples include
startup sequences, configuration files for other programs, messages for
telecommunications, source code, and even phone directories. I am aware
that most if not all wordprocessors allow save as ascii, but it generally
involves a few more keystrokes. It's generally easier to call up a text
editor. Also text editors are nifty for looking at binary files, which
will often crash a wordprocessor, or at least be transformed into bizarre
control codes and formatting codes.
There are several strong criticisms I have to give to PEdit. It
still doesn't scroll as fast as it should, compared to other products
currently available, though it is fast (considerably faster than
WordPerfect.) I already mentioned the scroll bar itself. PEdit does not
offer wordwrap, which would make it far more useful to those of us who
use PEdit as a text editor and not for source code. PEdit (and in fact
all WordPerfect Corp. products) currently do not support AREXX, the
powerful new macro language that lets users customize programs, and allows
for the easy transfer of data between programs that support AREXX.
Finally, there is a nasty way to guru PEdit currently - be careful of
holding down the tab key for long periods of time. PEdit will zip on out
to position twelve million or so if allowed, at which point the computer
will guru.
PEdit overall competes favorably with the competition. I see it
mostly going up against UEdit (shareware at $45 and alot more powerful,
but quite difficult to use) and TxEd Plus. Users of those already
entrenched programs would probably find little reason to make the switch
to PEdit, unless it was the keystroke similarity with WordPerfect. This
"feature" of keystroke compatibility with WordPerfect could actually be a
disadvantage to non-WordPerfect users, as commands are tied heavily to
function keys instead of mnemonics. With ARexx, wordwrap, and the guru
problem fixed, PEdit could retail by itself for $80. But with those
problems, I'd say in its current garb PEdit is worth $60.
NoteBook
========
Notebook is a curious little program that upon first examination
appears to be a miniature rolodex-type program on the surface. However,
upon closer examination, it seems to fall into the "beauty of simplicity"
cliche. Notebook is a flexible mini-database that makes no pretense to be
full-blown.
The first step in setting up a database is the "record template"
screen. This area is used for designing the visual appearance of each
record in the database and the labels for the fields. For instance, most
of my database records have a perimeter of asterisks with a title at the
top and a line of dashes just below the title. Think of this screen as
the actual card inside the rolodex file. A "field" is a piece of
information inside a record, such as a name field, or an address field.
The fields themselves appear as blank spaces into which the address or
name is typed, and it's within the "record template" screen that the labels
are made next to the field.
Here's an example:
Record Template
******************************************************************************
* Address and Phone Number *
* Database and Dialer *
*----------------------------------------------------------------------------*
* *
* *
*(1) Name: (2) Department: *
* Address: Home Phone: *
* City: 2nd Phone: *
* State: Zip: Business: Mailing List: *
* (y/n) (y/n) *
* *
* Description or Information *
* *
******************************************************************************
(1) is the label for the actual field itself, (2). The fields are added
and moved around to proper position in what is known as "record display".
The fields in the above record are Name, Department, Address, Home Phone,
City, 2nd Phone, State, Zip, Business, Mailing List, and Description or
Information. (Remember though the text up there is a label for the actual
field.)
The flexibility of the labelling allows prompting such as the
"(y/n)" prompts above. Another example would be a list of artists and what
they do. Some text could be written in the "record template" to prompt
for painting, sculpture, drawing, writing, etc. Note that the program does
not actually check to make sure the text in the field matches the prompts,
but that's not especially necessary.
Note that the list above is actually scrunched less than normal
size, the "Description or Information" field is actually about five or six
lines long. Also text can have various attributes, my title is boldfaced
and the "Description or Information" is underlined.
One annoyance with the program is the actual entry during the
Record Template field. There are really no editing commands available -
no centering, no even insertion or deletion of spaces to move things
around. If a mistake is made, it's time to retype the entire label. This
part of the program really needs to be beefed up a tad.
Here's an example of the List Display with a few records entered.
List Display
Name Address Home Phone 2nd Phone
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
John Doe 12 Pleasant Road 854-0124 835-3909
Sally Rodgers 45 Red Street 769-0392 784-8549
(*Note: above persons are purely fictitious. Any similarity to actual
persons, either living or dead or in cryonic suspension, is purely a
figment of your overactive imagination.*)
Not all fields will fit on the List Display, but it's easy to
choose which fields to display. Searches, sorting, and deleting are easy
from this list by moving the cursor around with the up and down arrows,
and marking records is done with the * key for multiple operations. It's
also possible to "search and mark", a very powerful feature for data
selection. For instance, we could search and mark only those people living
in Chesapeake, Virginia, then print only those records, delete only those
records, or save those records to a separate file. Searching allows
wildcards.
Records are added by hitting F9, which switches to the Record Display.
Record Display looks exactly like Record Template shown above, but actual
data is entered into the fields next to the labels. Notebook uses
WordPerfect's standard keystrokes for editing text, to keep consistency
for WordPerfect users. It also continues WordPerfect's excellent
date-entry and format features. Notebook also allows the use of macros to
simplify and quicken repetitive tasks.
There is another important advantage that Notebook offers to
WordPerfect users. The data file itself is WordPerfect merge-file
compatible, so that a form letter can be typed in WordPerfect and mailed
to the people in the above list very easily. Marked records can be sent
out in a "scrap file" to be used within WordPerfect (to send letters only
to people in Virginia, for instance), or to be loaded and merged into
other Notebook files. Let's not forget that Notebook can be multitasked
alongside WordPerfect for enhanced flexibility also. WordPerfect's
flexible backup options (timed and original) are also available.
Notebook will dial phone numbers through a Hayes-compatible
Smartmodem.
Overall, Notebook is a very powerful and flexible tool. Weighing
in at around 80K, it should multitask nicely and be available for filing
information and ideas frequently. There are two problems with Notebook
that WordPerfect needs to fix - the program opens the serial port
exclusively for its own uses, which is a no-no in a multitasking
environment, especially for the simple dialing of telephone numbers. This
eliminates the ability of Notebook to multitask with a terminal program -
one of the uses of Notebook that could be very valuable - jotting down a
user's GEnie address and CIS account numbers, for instance, or making a
list of things to check when logging off. There's also a way to crash and
burn the whole computer - don't dare exit NoteBook with the write-protect
on. The computer says "software error-task held" but it isn't held, it's
locked.
Notebook would also be far more useful with the enhancement of
simple math. Multiplication, addition, subtraction, and division would
enhance the value and usefulness of Notebook. I'm not going to try to
turn Notebook into Superbase or DBase, but this addition would be worthy
and not overcomplicate things. Notebook is quick and easy, yet extremely
powerful for manipulating the simpler data. I consider it to be one of
the more important parts of the Library package. I'll give it a $50
retail value (to be increased significantly with the addition of math
should it be added.)
Calendar
========
Calendar has four windows that show a diagram of a calendar on the
screen, an appointment list, a memo window, and a "to-do" list. Each
window is separate and controllable with their own slider bars, front and
back gadgets, and resizing capability. The main calendar window that
shows the diagram of the calendar is the window that has the Library
calendar "zoom" gadget.
Here's a diagram of the window format in Calendar, minus
front/back gadgets, scroll bars and arrows, and the shrink/expand gadget
in the calendar diagram:
===============================================================================
| |Calendar 1.0 |Calendar Appointment |
---------------------------------------|--------------------------------------|
Month Year | Day, Month, Date, Year |
<- -> |--------------------------------------|
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun | times | appointment |
| | |
| | |
calendar in here | | |
(no I'm not going to attempt to | | |
draw one!) | | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
|======================================|
|Calendar To-Do |
|--------------------------------------|
| Day, Month, Date, Year |
=======================================|--------------------------------------|
Calendar Memo | Priority | Item |
---------------------------------------|--------------------------------------|
Day, Month, Date, Year | | |
---------------------------------------| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
===============================================================================
Remember these are three separate windows with flexibility of
positioning and sizing, including the optional elimination of windows that
aren't in use, go along way toward giving Calendar a realistic Amiga-like
feel. Plus, the slider bars in Calendar (unlike many of WordPerfect
Corp's slider bars) are real Amiga sliders that have repeat arrows, and
show the proportions correctly with the slider and container. One problem
with this multi-windowed environment though, is that when multitasking
with calendar, the three separate windows have to be separately pulled to
the front. There should be a way of pulling all the windows together
to the front.
The main calendar diagram is used for reference and for moving
between dates with arrow combinations. As the arrows are used to move
between dates, the date display that's just below the title bar in the
other windows changes to show the date displayed in the calendar diagram.
Appointments, memos, and the "to-do" list are automatically updated to
reflect what's been scheduled for the date highlighted in the calendar
diagram. The user can configure the format of the date as it appears in
each window, in addition to the sizing and location on the screen. The
calendar diagram is also configurable for which day begins the week.
Little "A"s appear in the window on days with appointments, "T"s appear on
days with a "to-do" list, and "M"s appear on days with a memo attached to
them.
Appointments
------------
The appointment list is probably the most important part of
Calendar, as it has the power and flexibility of a professional scheduling
program. Appointments are entered either individually with an assigned
time (once the proper day has been chosen in the calendar diagram) or
duplicated across days. The duplication command is very flexible -
starting and ending dates for the appointment are given (for instance, for
the next six months) and the time of the appointment is typed. Then, the
and the days of the week on which the appointment is to be set. Calendar
will duplicate this appointment (such as a regular meeting) across the
date range, and warn of any conflicts with previously entered
appointments.
When a conflict does appear, Calendar allows the user to stop the
duplication process, or to keep one or both of the appointments.
A user can make an "appointment outline" listing the starting time
of the day for appointments to appear, ending time, and time interval
between appointments. This allows for a business person to begin
scheduling appointments from 8am to 5pm for instance, with 30 minute
intervals. Once the times appear in the appointment window, the text for
the appointment is entered.
If both beginning and ending times are entered for an appointment,
Calendar is supposed to warn of any conflicts in schedule. This part of
the program isn't working at all currently. Not only should it work, but
it should be a bit more flexible - it's impossible to drive across town in
five minutes, for instance, so there should be a way to extend the
possibility for conflicts, instead of actual time overlaps.
Alarm
-----
Alarming appointments is accomplished through a small and separate
program called (appropriately enough) alarm that can be run from within
Calendar or from outside Calendar. When an appointment approaches, alarm
will alarm the user a user-defined number of minutes before the entered
time of the appointment. Other configurations include the ability of the
user to define the seconds between the rings until Alarm is shut off, and
the use of the built-in Amiga speech synthesizer to say the appointment if
so desired. Even the alarm sound itself can be a digitized IFF sound
file!
Appointments entered can be defaulted automatically to alarm (a
little musical note appears next to the time) or defaulted not to alarm
unless manually marked.
Alarm goes off by popping a requestor on the screen with the text
of the appointment, optionally ringing the digitized sound, and optionally
speaking the text of the appointment. There is an "off" button and a
"snooze" button, just as on an alarm clock. One small criticism -
"snoozing" should have a value of its own duration. Currently "snooze"
stops the alarm for one cycle only.
To-Do
-----
The text entered in the "To-Do" window is helpful for organizing
each day. A list is made of items with integer priorities, and as things
are actually done during the day, they can be marked with a checkmark, at
which point they drop to the bottom of the list.
User options consist of forcing a unique priority for every item
on the list (one couldn't have two items at "Priority 1" for instance),
and whether non-completed items should be automatically carried over to
the next day.
Once entered, to-do items can be renumbered, priorities changed,
or the text of the item edited with the standard WordPerfect command set.
Memo
----
Memo is a simple text window used for general comments about the
entire day, for instance "Mother's Birthday" or "Pay mortgage next week".
Calendar Summary
----------------
There are other options that a user has with Calendar. An
auto-archive or delete feature will automatically delete old items from
the calendar file to prevent it from growing too large, or will archive
older items to a separate file. The "date difference" mode calculates the
number of days between two dates, and displays the results in days, weeks,
months, and years if the two dates are far enough apart. The "day count"
feature will calculate any combination of days of the week between two
dates - for instance how many Tuesdays and Thursdays exist between June
first and August first.
The editing commands are very powerful, and include global
deletions of entire lists, the WordPerfect editing set, and undo features.
Searching is also available - there is search for a date and bring
it to the display, the ability to immediately return to the current date,
and forward, reverse, and "search from start" searching for text. The text
searches support normal wildcarding - for instance searching for "J*
Birthday" would display John's, Janet's, and Jorge's birthdays (with
subsequent searches) as long as the birthdays are entered in the file.
Searching searches the to-do list, the appointment list, and the memo
window.
There is also a "merge calendar" feature that merges two peoples'
calendars into one file and displays any conflicts. For instance, merging
John's and Ralph's calendars together displays any conflicts in schedules
of appointments. If there is a conflict, an appointment can be discarded,
kept, or the conflict ignored.
Printing is very flexible, as users can print only appointments,
memos, or to-do lists, or any combination of the three for either today,
the day on which the cursor is resting in the calendar diagram, the
current month or the entire current year. There are options to print
blank days or not, to keep every day on a separate page, and to save in
WordPerfect format.
Calendar is easily the most powerful and best done utility in
Library. It has no competition whatsoever. Everything else that's
similar for the Amiga, such as Gizmos, quickly fades into the oblivion of
"cuteness" or "gimmickery" next to Calendar. I've found that Calendar has
actually made my days more efficient as I've organized them more, and I'm
not a businessman. I'm a college student who's currently in summer
break. When school does start again, I know that Calendar is going to
save my neck many times from forgetting things that I'm supposed to do,
and helping to plan and schedule my time well in advance. For those
reasons, Calendar is valuable probably to alot of people who don't realize
it.
Calendar's interface is very good even though it's tied to the
function keys alot. Whoever did the scroll bars for this part of Library
should sit all the other WordPerfect programmers down and show them what
an Amiga scroll bar is - they work exactly as they should work. The menus
are tied to the function keys, but everything is available from the
keyboard, and displayed very nicely and efficiently on the windows. One
annoying defect in the user interface is that for some reason there is no
keyboard overlay for Calendar. The initial learning curve is higher than
it should be because of this. I can't understand why they didn't include
a template with Library's best product.
For alot of people Calendar is going to be worth the entire value
of Library by itself. But that's because it currently has no competition -
I'll assign it a retail value of $90. It's one of the best programs I've
seen in a long time. The highest compliment I can pay it is that it's
helped improve the quality of my life by helping me to organize my time
more efficiently.
Library Summary and Wrapup
--------------------------
One annoyance is that Library uses "font one" from the Print disk
whenever any of the programs print on the printer, and there's no way to
change it, without saving as WordPerfect and loading into WordPerfect to
print. All Library programs should allow the selection of which font to
use. Though the Amiga printer in Print would also work, it's a few
extra steps and toggling to change the printer to the Amiga printer.
I'm also uncertain about the continued heavy reliance on the
function keys. WordPerfect Corp. has stated many times that they wish to
maintain keystroke compatibility with IBM products, and that's fine. But
those of us who don't use IBMs shouldn't be punished with non-mnemonic
commands tied to the function keys. There's a control, and alternate, and
two Amiga keys (or one Commodore key and one Amiga key) to use to give
Amiga users and alternate, mnemonic user interface. Use them! And I also
say to WordPerfect Corp. (I know I've said it many times already) please
learn what an Amiga scroll bar is!
There's good news and bad news as far as bugs go. The good news is
that this first release is light years ahead of WordPerfect itself, and
*appears* to be things that could be cleared up with one update, rather
than five or six. I emphasize *appears* - that's a pure guess from me
based on the nature of the bugs and the way this company has worked in the
past. The bad news is that there's one way to guru Notebook, two ways to
guru Calculator, and a way to crash PEdit. That's still too much even for
a first release.
I can only hope as a user that WordPerfect Corp. will give Library
the same attention it has given to WordPerfect, and correct things soon. I
also hope that whatever this company's third product is, whenever it is
released, is as much of an improvement over this product in bugs as this is
over WordPerfect itself. I will report updates and improvements to both
WordPerfect and WordPerfect Library in Amy Report, so stay tuned.
WordPerfect Library is a very powerful set of utilities that,
based on my estimations, is worth $250 the way I calculate it. That
doesn't include File Manager, to which I assigned a value of $10, but
which many people will have no or limited use. Few people are going to
use all of the programs in Library. Those used to TxEd Plus won't have
any use for PEdit, and some people (myself included) have no real use for
a calculator. I do think that alot of people will have a use for both
Calendar and Notebook. To see if Library is for you, total up the values
I've assigned to the individual programs and compare that to the $129
retail.
===========================================================================
AMIC-Term Preview
Amic Term is written by Dave Salas & Albert Kirk
By Mark D. Manes and Henry Colonna
*DISCLAIMER* This preview is meant to show what lies ahead for Amiga
telecommunicators with the forthcoming Amic-Term 1.0. However, the release
date is at least several months away - there is NO official release date
at this time. Specifications and lists of features in this preview are
subject to change - radical change, but the time the product hits the
market. Amy Report, and the Amic-Term authors, are not responsible for
complying to the specification list in this preview, as it is not
an advertisement, for for information purposes only.
Well in the next few months, Amic-Term in professional garb will be
released. A Amic-term has undergone many improvements since last
December. Here is a list of the new features you will find in
Amic-Term 1.0.
- File Transfer Protocols -
The most important feature in most peoples minds is the number of
protocols available, especially with more and more users using PC
Pursuit. Amic is the leader in this regard. Amic-term supports
the following protocols: Xmodem, WXmodem, Xmodem 1k, Ymodem
Batch, Zmodem, Kermit and a special "double-talk" like protocol
known as Amic-talk. Amic-talk will allow you to send files from
one amiga to another while chatting with your remote user.
- Terminal Emulations -
Probably one of the secondary concerns for most folks has to do
with terminal emulations, Amic is standing tall in that
department as well. Amic offers TTY, ANSI, ANSI/IBM, ANSI/AMIC,
VT100, and VT52. The VT100 will be fully compatible with a real
VT100 including 132 column mode, and double-height, double-width
characters!
- The Phone Book -
The phone book has some of the best features that were previously
only found in the likes of Procom Plus or Qmodem for the IBM PC.
The feature list is quite impressive. The phone book module will
allow you to keep multiple phone books. In each phone book you
can keep track of the following: terminal emulation of choice,
your favorite file transfer protocol, color pallet, the macro
keys, the fast menu (more on that later), the initialization
script (more on that too!), the total time spent on a given
system showing current month, last month, total minutes, and the
number of calls. Concerned about your bill? Amic provides bill
tracking! Amic keeps track of the amount of money spent on
each system on a monthly basis! There is further support for PC
Pursuit users as well. Amic also will keep track of downloads and
uploads for each entry on the phone book.
When dialing, a window appears while waiting for a connect, with
detailed information on last time/date connected, dialing status,
and a description of the BBS.
The phone book has a nifty new interface with some custom gadgets,
including some "on-off" toggles that look like light switches.
- Fast Windows -
Fast Windows is a nifty feature that is entirely Amiga. This
feature allows you to create a iconic interface to any BBS or
commercial service. That's right, point and click and you are in
the Starship Amiga on GEnie, or in the AmigaForum on Compuserve.
- Simply Amiga Only Features -
You don't like the standard topaz font in the Amiga? You want to
use that font you have created? No problem, Amic loads standard
Amiga fonts. You want 50 lines of text on your screen? Amic
supports Interlace, Custom Screen or will live on a Workbench
Screen.
The ability to send remote commands to another Amiga is no
problem either. You can get a directory of a disk in a friends
drive, or execute most CLI commands. These commands can also be
done locally, with the results sent only to the local screen or
out the modem port as well.
- Review Buffer -
The review buffer in Amic can be up to 62k in size. You can cut
& paste from this buffer. You can send your review buffer to
Txed or the Notepad (or any other program that supports
clipboards)
- The Script Language -
Amic comes with a programming language of its very own. These
script commands number well over one hundred and ten commands.
Also, all the hooks are there to deal with and support AREXX!
(AREXX is not included).
- The User Interface -
Some of the complaints in the past had to do with the user
interface in Amic-term. Amic-term's menu's have all be re-
organized in a more "intuitive" like manner. The screens are
clean and professional. The special FUN-COLORS flag is nice, the
copper list is modified and you have multicolored (or
multi-shaded) text.
Suggested Retail Price is $99, and will be available through
Haitex.
-mark=
Henry
Amic Beta Testers
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
AMY REPORT Issue #3 July 13, 1988 (c)'88 Henry Colonna and APEInc.
All Rights Reserved. Reprint permission granted except where noted in
the article. Any reprint must include AMY Report and the author in the
credits. Views Presented here are not necessarily those of AMY Report or
of the Staff.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------