The Learning Curve/The Learning Curve (Weird Science, 1996).iso/computers/noahs.arc/part6

Text File | 1995-10-05 | 30.8 KB | 611 lines

  Let's take a quick peek at the Extras disk to see if there's anything
there we want.  Nope!

  Well maybe a few things.  Try out the Keytoy just for giggles; it'll show
you your Alternate keyboard characters.  Fed is a font editor and you'll
want to goof around with it some day.  IconMerge is a useful little icon
tool which you'll want to toss onto the IconBench.  You'll also want to
punch up the PerfMon just to check it out.  Don't bother with FreeMap,
Palette and MEmacs.  FreeMap is so bad it smacks of nepotism.

  The Basic demos are kind of dumb, and unless you purposefully get into it,
you won't be spending any time with Basic.

  You might want to have a BasicBench, which would be a BareBench with the
AmigaBasic program on it, just for running the odd program.  There are a few
good games written in Basic, and FPMapEd, a Firepower map editor, is one of
the finest downloads I've seen, for one of the coolest tank games, ever.

  That FPMapEd is, by the way, the program I mentioned before that ran faster
with NoFastMem run first.  Maybe it has something to do with it being in
Basic, or maybe it was just an oldie.  These are deep waters, indeed.

                                    *

  Well, it's time to spend a few minutes with our faithful friend, Ed.  I
should state at the beginning that is IS a hokey old thing, and relatively
"dumb", but for a quick, basic editing of a textfile, it's perfect.

        Common commands:  (all Esc commands, capitals not necessary)

          T - Top of file
          B - Bottom of file
         BS - Block Start
         BE - Block End
         IB - Insert Block
         DB - Delete Block
         CS - move Cursor to Start of line
         CE - move Cursor to End of line
         WB - Write Block to new file
         IF - Insert a different File into this file
          F - Finds keyword
          D - Delete line
          Q - Quit Ed without saving
          X - save file
         SA - save without exiting ("freshen up the file")

  Learn these and that's Ed.  The WB and IF ones need EXACT format,
like so:   (Esc)  WB"df0:temp/xx  (Return)   That will write the block
you've selected (with BS and BE) to your temp directory and name it
"xx".  The quote mark and no space are critical.  The only thing limiting
about BS is that once you have a block marked, you can't do much else with
the cursor or it loses the block.  You can go to the top and bottom of the
file, as well as use the Find feature, but that's about it.  If you want to
MOVE the block, make sure you Delete Block RIGHT after you've Inserted Block,
got that?

  "Insert File", IF, uses the same format:  (Esc) IF"Ram:xx  to insert an
already-written file (Ram:xx) into the line the cursor is on.

  F, for Find, searches for the keyword you enter, such as (Esc) F"keypad
to search for the word "keypad".  Also, remember Find is case-sensitive.
It's easy to forget it so I'll say it again:  Find is case-sensitive.  That's
one of the reasons it's "dumb".  An apostrophe works fine in place of the
quote mark unless the word you're searching for has an apostrophe in it.

  You can quickly scroll up and down using the Ctrl U and Ctrl D keys, but
it's a little weird, especially with a large textfile in Interlace.

  Ed trick:  ED just gives you 76 characters across, although you can squeeze
out 77 if you put a character under or before the cursor, before you get to
the end of the line.  That'll shift the margin out rather than giving you a
"carriage return", so you can type in the 77th character.  Then you delete
the extra character and CS to get back to the start of the line.

  Now and then, for no apparent reason, Ed won't let you Save, spitting some
inexplicable reason back at you, so just remember you can still WriteBlock
what you want (the whole thing, for that matter) to Ram or something until
you can get out of there and start afresh.  It's usually 'cause the pathname
to the file you're editing is wrong.

                                       *

  And yes, those are the first quote marks we've used.  About the only other
instance I can think of is when we want to copy or rename or whatever a file
that has spaces in the name, like, say, the Extras(space)1.3 disk:

                Assign "Extras 1.3:" df1:DirtyBench

  I presume you've bought both of the DOS books.  Read them just like you
did the Amiga manual; understanding each time you read it about 20 to 30
percent of what you haven't understood so far.  Did I get that right?  The
books cover things like the use of quotation marks and asterisks quite well.
Now if only they'd tell me when I'm supposed to use FastMemFirst!

                                    *

  What's that?  What's that you say??  You HAVE a modem, printer, extra
drive, joysticks, plexitable, disk rack, oodles of blank disks and BOTH
DOS books??  Well, then..clearly it's time to go software shopping!

  Okay, you bought Online.  You screwed around with that dumb PD modem
program your buddy gave you and wondered just WHY they couldn't do just a
FEW simple things right..so you finally went ahead and spent real money.

  You bought Deluxe PaintII because you need it as a primary, basic tool for
graphics work.  And you did, after all, buy a graphics-oriented computer.

  You bought FaccII and are, let's face it, thrilled.  You had a certain
bittersweet feeling as you bid that last good-bye to faithful old AddBuffers
as it was borne away to far-off Bytelandia.

  You looked at Sculpt 3-D and said we-e-e-e-ll, maybe you'd better wait,
and that was the correct decision.

  You broke down and bought ProWrite because Notepad was driving you crazy
with all of its little quirks, and using Ed is completely out because
it doesn't have Word-Wrap.  Sure, it wraps around the first time you type
the sentence, but just try adding a few words here or there once it's
written.  If you don't know what I'm talking about yet because you haven't
tried using Ed to write a letter, you have a terrible shock awaiting you.
I just don't have the heart to say any more.  And I'm, if you can believe it,
writing THIS whole crazy thing in Ed!  Obviously the thing to do would be to
write it with ProWrite and then convert it to text, but NO-O-O-O, no one's
written a program to do that (yet, I hope).  And yes, ProWrite does have a
feature that saves in text format, but it doesn't work quite correctly.
Notepad doesn't save in text right either, which doesn't surprise me.  Just
a few of those many fun computerland quirks.  I know a guy who has a 500 and
can't get his snazzy Toshiba printer to print because no one's written a
driver for it!  "Why doesn't somebody write a program that will..." will be a
question you will ask more than once.

  Update Note:  Finally, after these many many moons, two "respectible" PD
terminal programs are out, JR-COMM, and NCOMM.  They both have their advo-
cates, so try them both.  I like NCOMM the best.  Also, DPaintIV is out,
and much-improved (does HAM pics).

  Update Note II:  I also finally ditched Ed. :)  I've been using the very-
excellent commercial product "CygnusEd" for years.  Still use ol' Ed now and
then, though.  CygnusEd is a full-screen tool; being able to pop open a
Workbench Ed window is still dang handy at times.

  So, you got all these neat programs just like that nice Mr. BenchMaster
told you to do, but what about GAMES?  When do we get to do some of the dumb,
mindless FUN stuff?!?!  "Mindless", did I say?  Ha ha ha.  Anyway, the
answer is, right now:

  An "arcade" game is one you can play again and again.  An "adventure" is
one you just play through once.  No, it's not a waste of money.  I figure I
probably put 50 hours into FaeryTale, exploring every nook and cranny, just
generally kicking butt and having a ball, and if the game cost me about $35,
that's a pretty good buy for top-notch entertainment $/per/hour.

Update Note:  Promise me you won't laugh at the following list. :)

Top Shelf:

   Silent Service - puts you in WW2 submarine.  Nothing's topped it yet,
                    except maybe...

   Gunship - puts you in armed-to-the-teeth chopper, super action and sound.

   FaeryTale - A great adventure, have fun and enjoy.

   Starglider - You won't be able to look at another space game after getting
                used to this one.  You'll wonder why they even bother.

   Dark Castle - This is still my favorite arcade game..always something new
                 to explore, something crazy to try.  It'll give you a
                 brand-new appreciation for keyboard sensitivity, promise.
                 If you're really good, say your prayers at night, help
                 old ladies across the street, spend countless hours at your
                 Amiga and do everything in this tutorial, I'll tell you
                 where the unknown, hidden Secret Passageway is...

   Beyond Dark Castle - a superb job of expanding and improving an already
                        excellent game.  I'm a third the way through it and
                        can only describe it as "an excruciating blast".

   Shadow of the Beast - Latest arrival.  Almost stunning graphics, the
                         smoothest background scrolling you'll see.  Made
                         everything up above look hokey. <grin>  The game is
                         tough as knots (only serious arcadists need apply),
                         but there's a cheat program running around the
                         boards that makes you invincible, praise be.

   Firepower - Still the quintessential tank game.  Extra fun because you
               can make new maps or edit the originals with FPMapEd.

   Barbarian - A fun arcade game, like Dark Castle, kind of unique.

   Chessmaster - Okay, so I've got a serious side.


Middle Shelf:

   All text adventures, like the Infocoms.  They're fun, but this is, after
     all, the greatest of graphic computers.  Still, if the above stuff
     isn't your bag, try Infocom's "A Mind Forever Voyaging", "Wishbringer",
     or "Suspended".  Suspended is definitely a trip.

   Defender of the Crown - A kid's game but some of the best graphics around.

   Uninvited - Another unique adventure, haven't gone too far in it.  Best
               mouse interaction I've seen.

   StargliderII - I don't know, call me a purist, I just didn't like it as
                  much.  You have to remember, the handling of the original
                  Starglider craft was what sparked my interest in the Amiga
                  in the first place.  These controls sucked.  Apart from
                  that, I've heard the game's terrific.

   Flight Simulator - Everything is so Real Time it'll drive you crazy.

   BattleChess - At $39 I considered this an "expensive hack" (the graphics
     are so wild you can't concentrate on the game) but I just HAD to have
     it.  It does have a 2-D board that you can use but, for what it's worth,
     it's not very smart Chess program.

   Dungeon Master - A lot of people have this on their Top Ten list, so
     thought it deserved mention.  An oldie but goodie.


  I recently picked up the absolute latest, VoRecOne, the program that allows
you to control the Amiga with, ahem, your voice!  Doesn't work all that well,
the industry's obviously still in its infancy, but beats the hell out of no
program at all.  It occurs to me that if I pre-record the commands with
FutureSound, VoRecOne won't have any problem recognizing them at all, as
they'll be digitized, so I could run a file speaking the different commands,
and VoRecOne could perform the tasks, and, and, there..there won't be any-
thing left for ME to do!  I'll have been..<sob!>..replaced by a computer!!

                                    *

  Those are my suggestions.  Get that money spent and quit bothering me.

                                    *

  If you've been using the Interlace mode since (or before) I mentioned it,
then you might have come to the question: Just what do we use the NON-Inter-
lace mode for??  Well, not much.  Icon editing for one.  We want to use the
IconEd, but everything's smaller in the Interlace mode.  No prob.  Do we
presume you've got the Interlace toggle switch Lace in the c directory, as
well as SetPrefs and SavePrefs, from the program PrefCh?  You can see them
there, right next to Conman, Mackie and Select.  Anyway, you have a certain
Workbench color scheme for the Interlace mode that you've saved with Save-
Prefs, calling it, say, Inlace.  You have another, brighter one for the non-
Interlace mode, call it Nolace.

  So you do the IconX thing:  First you write a scriptfile:


     Lace                   ;switches screen to non-Interlace mode
     SetPrefs Nolace        ;turns on non-Interlace colors
     df0:Utilities/IconEd   ;loads IconEd.  Scriptfile freezes here until
                            ;IconEd is quit (no Run used)
     SetPrefs Inlace        ;turns on Interlace colors
     Lace                   ;toggles back to Interlace


  You can't call the file "IconEd", as you know, so let's call it "IconEd!"
for now.  After you get the hang of IconX, you can try renaming the
actual program something like "IconEd-" (in my own system, the minus sign
means that it's part of an Xicon file) and name the scriptfile the correct
name, but for now let's keep things straight.  A few programs, including,
amazingly enough, IconEd, won't run correctly with the name changed.  The
best practice is to just call the scriptfile something else until you're
sure the file's executing okay.  Then do JUST the renaming business and see
if it still works.  It takes a little longer, but making just one or two
changes at a time, once you've gotten a program to run, keeps things at least
within the realm of potentially understanding what suddenly went wrong.

  Next we change the IconEd icon over from a Tool type to a Project type,
with IconEd (Doctor, heal thyself?) or IconType.  I know, I know, you still
don't have IconType because, well, you needed groceries, and then you
had to make a phone call, and then you probably needed to do something else,
and, well, just forget it.  The new Project icon is named after the script-
file, so it's "IconEd!.info".  Put "df0:c/IconX" in the Default Tool box of
the Info window and that should do it.  Leave the old icon in the drawer as
IconEd looks for it to plaster all over the little editing windows.  It'll
run without it but gives you an error message.  That's why it doesn't like
to be renamed.  Most programs don't mind, just don't rename anything until
you've gotten it to run first normally.

  If you had to whittle the whole procedure of running a new program down to
three steps, it would be:

1.  Run as Tool, usually through enclosed icon
2.  Run it from IconX scriptfile, allowing you to customize things
3.  Change names, delete what you think are unnecessary files, etc

  You might also want to have a special editing pointer for IconEd, so you'd
SavePrefs a special setting just for IconEd, and use that instead of Nolace
in the scriptfile.  You might want different pointers and/or colors for
lots of different programs..live it up, they're a whole 232 bytes apiece.

  I suggest the Hermes IconLab as your main tool to change the type of an
icon.  Treat the Disk icons, the "disk.info", like any other.  Also, you'll
want the IconLab to view any downloaded Disk icons you get, as Disk icons
can't be viewed inside a window.  For archival purposes change them to Tool
or Project icons.

                                       *

  A program wanting to call up something "by name", be it an icon, a
terminal (.trm) file, a font, a lib, a dev, whatever, will be one of your
constant ongoing challenges.  Sometimes a program will want the disk named
to a certain something and you have to do a re-assign.  Sometimes a program
wants a certain font, and whoever arc'd the thing for uploading forgot to
include it.  IconEd, as mentioned, needs an icon with it to run correctly,
even though you're running it through the CLI.  When I first got my hard
drive I faithfully copied both the harddisk.device AND the harddisk.device.-
info over to the Expansion directory, although I couldn't for the life of me
figure out what I would want an icon for the hard drive device driver for.
Things ran just great and at one point I was just doing a little dusting and
swept that silly icon right out the door.  Surprise!  The hard drive didn't
boot!  Naturally, copying the icon back over to the Expansion drawer was the
LAST thing I tried, but sure enough, that's what it was.  Conversely, if I
had been handed Online!, spelled "Online", without the exclamation mark, it
would have run just fine, and I would never have known it calls up the
"Online!.trm" file automatically as it loads, very convenient.  So be care-
ful, take things a step at a time, and keep in mind all the things a program
might need to run, especially if you're trying to run it from a REALLY sliced
up, whittled-down Workbench.

  You might try odd things that make other programs work, such as having the
arp.library in libs.  You'll find some people just kind of assume you've
got the arp.library or the Shell program or whatever.  They might assume
you're running it from an icon instead of the CLI, or vice versa.  You might
be running it from an icon, all right, but a Project one for IconX to use,
instead of a Tool icon, which isn't the same deal at all.

  Sometimes they assume you've got the file(s) on the surface, excuse me,
"at the root" of df0, instead of in a directory, and also some programs
DO demand to be in a certain directory, usually c.

  At some point, pick up the program "SnoopDOS" when you're hunting through
the boards.  It's a "system snooper" and there's a good chance it will tell
you what failed.  The next step up after SnoopDOS is DOSTrace.

                                       *

Misc Dept:

      SAY NOTES                                    MUSTS

A:                                            CLI needs Run
wander         waunder
haw haw        hau hau                        Notepad needs clipboard.device
shall          shal                           but not the clipboard dir
gals,pals      gaels,paels
                                              Say needs both the translator-
E:                                            .library and narrator.device
baby           babeeee
baby.          babee                          Calculator needs mathieeedoub-
yeah           yia                            bas.library
residence      risidence
                                              LoadWb needs icon.library
I:
service        servis                         Select needs Execute and Run
fixing         ficksing
Mrs.           missus                         RunBack needs Run
friday         fryday
office         ofis
continent      con.tih.nent

O:
to             too
okay           ookay
stove          stofe
Jose           hoesay
toots          tutes
como           cowmo
modem          mowdem

U:
minute         minite
doesn't        dussent
you            yu, u
truth          trooth


  And just a little thought on the side:  You'll occasionally hear an Amiga
owner putting an Atari down, but that's wrong.  Look at them more as our
poor cousins from across the tracks.  I mean, at least they're trying.

  I might also mention that it's slightly blasphemous to put down our little
brother Commodores, the 64 and 128.  It should be pretty clear that if it
weren't for them, we could kiss off our Amiga.  Commodore is kind of like a
foster parent who took the little Los Gatos starvling under their wing and
helped feed them just enough to get their start.  They weren't particularly
proud of the little pipsqueak, and didn't brag about him much to the other
parents, but when the ugly little duckling grew up to be this beautiful
swan, they were as proud as, well, peacocks, and wanted to, uh, crow to the
world about him.  Of course, if you want to, er, hawk your wares in today's
market, it takes a lot of, um, chicken feed, and if you can't, uh, swallow
the fact that they can't spend it all on us, well, (just can't think of how
else to put it!) there's no sense in GROUSING about it!

                                       *

  Hey, by the way, I bet you've really grown to dislike that "Software
Error" requester, the one that says "To Reset/Debug" all you have to do is
to simply click in this little box and...oh no!  GURU CITY!!  Yes, you've
probably come to really hate that little box and are probably just outraged
that any modern computer would take such a cheap shot, like, "Yeah, hey
buddy, ya want me to fix this little snag?  Watch this!"  *POOF!*  I mean,
sure, ANYbody can hit Ctrl-LeftAmiga-RightAmiga to reboot the sucker..sure,
that'll fix ANYthing!  Okay, fine, your complaint is seemingly fair and
justified.  Now think about the term "multitasking", and why they call the
Amiga's multitasking "true" multitasking, and the Apple's multitasking
"garbage".  And think how much your complaint would mean to a meeting of
single-tasking IBM users:  Would they let you escape the auditorium alive?
Being able to work around that "Guru Requester", to save important things
that were in Ram, to say "screw it", push it to the background and press
on...THAT is one of the things that makes this computer so special.  And
has redefined the term "multitasking" for the industry.

  Just didn't want you writing an angry letter to Amiga World about it. :/

                                       *

  Have you picked up DU-VI yet?  You can see why I call it a "CLI-Buster",
what a great tool.  I've downloaded about six DU's and this is definitely
the best.

  Cunningham's also the one who did GShow, the fine displayer for graphic
pics.  GShow lets you activate the color cycling by hitting the TAB key,
SView shows the pic cycling by default, which is why I had you pick them
both up.  Just a couple of tools for ol' GraphBench.  I keep GShow in my
Workbench's c directory, renamed as "Shot", as a rule.  If you don't know
what color cycling is, well, you've just got a whole BUNCH of fun stuff to
find out about, don't you?  It's basically a function of DPaint and can get
pretty wild.

  Update Note:  With today's "smart" DU's out there, ol' DU-VI is looking
kind of feeble, but for just a basic, solid DU, it's still tops.

  Anyway, DU-VI is certainly the most valuable tool you've added to your
bench yet.  Indeed, it may be the most valuable ever.  An excellent program.
It works so well and the documentation is so clear that I really can't think
of a single thing to add.  No, not one.  Nope.  None.  Not one.

  Well, uh, maybe one teensy-eensy little thing.  Hate to even bring it up,
really.  He, uh, well, he mixpelled a word, is what he did.  Hit Free to see
how many bytes are free on this device, and you get "dievice", which is
exactly what you DON'T want to happen to your device!  If yours says
"device" then you got a corrected version, by me, him or someone.  This is
absolutely no knock on the guy's spelling.  $40 commercial games will
force some glaring mistake at you in 2-inch-high letters.  I guess the all-
time classic has to be Firepower, the tank game.  Here's this big fancy
modern-day snazzy wargame, who knows how many people must have previewed it,
goofed around with it during development, tinkered with it at the last
moment...and sure enough, if you die, this great big message appears that
says (are your ready?)    YOUR DEAD!!   Yes, your really are!!  So, we might
say, if there's an un-will, there's a un-way.  Let nothing surprise us.
There, in glowing blue and white, at the bottom of a document copyrighted by
as modern a company as a computer company can be, there, at the bottom of the
StartupII scriptfile on the 1.3 disk, reads the line:

         break 1 C ;signal to other process its ok to finish

  Its is?  Yes, it's!

                                       *

  All right, back to the business at hand.  Did you download NewZap?  I hope
you found version 3.1; he messed around with it in the latest version and
really screwed up the color arrangements.  It was hard enough to read before,
the latest version is even harder.  If you have version 3.1, open Prefs and
set the colors to:

                 #1 - 6    #2 - 0    #3 - 11   #4 - 6
                      6         0         11        0
                      6         0         11        0

then hit USE and then "SavePrefs Zap" to save this Prefs setting.  Then type
"SetPrefs Inlace" to get your Interlace colors back.  I really like the
program, it's just that getting the colors right so that things are clear in
the Search mode as well as the Hex is a bitch.  You are more than welcome to
put NewZap at the top of the screen and Prefs on the bottom and experiment
for yourself.

  We "Ed s/z" (z for zap, right?) and our scriptfile would read:


            SetPrefs Zap        ;special NewZap color scheme
            Lace                ;needs all the help it can get
            Utilities/NewZap    ;load NewZap (no Run)
            SetPrefs Inlace     ;back to Interlace colors
            Lace                ;back to Interlace mode


  Run that puppy, activate the Filespec box and type in "df0:Utils/DU-VI"
or whatever directory it's in (if in a directory at all) and hit Return.
That ugly mess that appears is DU-VI.  Pull down the Search menu, activate
the box and type in "die" or "dievice", hit Return and NewZap will search the
program for those characters.  When you see them, click on the "d" with the
mouse and type in over the old letters "device", then a space for the extra
letter.  Hit SAVE, click NewZap's close gadget and get the hey out of there.
Presto, one repaired Directory Utility.  If this gets you excited, please
be.  NewZap certainly gave ME plenty to do, heh heh heh...

  For starters, of course, you can change a DU line like "Searching For
Selected Files" to something a little clearer, like "Hold on a sec, will ya?"
You can zap games and have characters or the computer swear at you, just all
kinds of great possibilities.  I had a gas with Defender of the Crown.

  Of course, you can also do semi-serious things with a file-zapper.  I
almost hate to bother you with it.  A good example might be our new buddy
Select.  It normally says something like "Please select a boot sequence",
but if we were, say, running a graphics program by a scriptfile and at some
point we wanted a chance to choose from which directory we wanted the pics
loaded, we could make a copy of Select renamed as Select2, file-zap it with
NewZap and change the "boot sequence" line to "Please pick a directory:".

  Continuing:  You then put "Select2 (filename) (filename)" in the script-
file and when it gets to that point it runs the Select2 and then seeks the s
directory for whatever scriptfile you've chosen.  If you have a lot of them
and/or don't want to clutter up your s directory, you can use the Assign
command in the scriptfile before the Select2 and "Assign s: df0:(dir)/(dir)"
and this way Select2 will search that dir instead.  At the end of the script-
file you'd have an "Assign s: df0:s".

  If there's any word of warning associated with "hex editing" (the proper
term), it's to only file-zap a copy of the program first.  If you so much as
touch ONE pixel in some programs, they won't run.  So just make sure that you
edit a copy and everything's working A-OK before you copy it over the
original.  I didn't mean to worry you, you can almost always file-zap the
hell out of programs, and I recommend you do.  Like the "Hold on a sec, will
ya?" up above, you can add a lot of character to your Workbench by file-
zapping different programs.

  You'll also NEED to file-zap certain programs in order for them to work
right.  A common example would be some program that's written to run from
"df0:", instead of the more proper "Sys:".  So, even if you copy it over to
the hard drive, it'll look in df0 for the files.  Answer?  Of course, file-
zap any "df0:" in the file to "dh0:".  No prob.

                                       *

  Let's take a sec and update our master copy of BareBench.  Periodically
you'll want to update your other benches with your latest scriptfiles, Prefs
settings, subroutines, etc.  I guess I have to assume you have a DU by now,
so pop that rascal up, pop the master BareBench in df1, and go through the
applicable directories, copying any "master" scriptfiles, subroutines, etc
over.  You, the budding computer operator, could even write a scriptfile to
do the dirty work for you.  You'll have a few variations of BareBench, some
more stripped down than others, maybe the ultimate one called WorkTable.

                                       *

  Go Ahead, Pop My Balloon Dept:

  Let's say you're thinking of writing a professional computer game for the
Amiga and you're wondering what key to use for the Pause key.  One key on
the keyboard that's kind of an oddball is the Help key, right?  And that's
usually what you NEED when you DO go grasping for the Pause key, right??
So it kind of sounds like an obvious choice, RIGHT???  Check this out:

  Starglider uses Del
  Barbarian uses Esc
  Dark Castle uses Tab
  Beyond Dark Castle uses Tab
  Gunship uses Tab
  Silent Service uses W
  Flight Simulator uses P
  Firepower uses Esc & joystick button
    and..
  FaeryTale uses the space bar!

  NOBODY uses the Help key!

  So much for my career as a computer programmer!

                                       *

 A few criticisms of the stock st-seq, aside from the general chaos they made
with the Shell business:

  - First, and granted this may sound petty, when you Type it, one line's too
long and the "h" from the end of "bench" gets put onto its own little line.
That could put some newcomer in a spin, thinking that somewhere in the
startup-sequence you're supposed to have the command "h".  In Ed it just
glides rudely out unseen past the margin, which, we note, it doesn't do by
default.  Quite obviously this person didn't have Mrs. Stolberg for fourth
grade English.

  - I don't like them mounting all these worthless handlers, like the Pipe
and Speak-Handlers.  Nothing wrong with them, they certainly might play an
integral part someday, we just don't want them hogging up 17,524 bytes
of disk space and wasting our time during the startup-sequence.  And what's
even more insidious, if that's the word, is that all the additional Mounts
means a longer MountList, so there's another thousand bytes wasted, not to
mention having to keep the Mount command on the disk in the first place,
thereby losing ANOTHER five thousand bytes.  They also hog some memory, not
a lot, but when you're scrapin' for every last byte, "not a lot" mean "WAY
too much".

  - I'm still trying to figure out why they CD'd to the c directory, and
maybe that doesn't puzzle me as much as that they didn't CD back out!  Guess
I missed something there.  Probably Mr. Shell's parting shot at me.  I also
notice they put the s dir in the Paths, which implies that they expect tools
to be in there, which flies in the face of thousands of years of tradition
and harmony.  Even with the ancient abacus, only scriptfiles were kept in the
s dir, tools always found a home elsewhere.  But we forgive them their
trespass.  They knew not upon what hallowed ground they trod.

                                       *