PD Chat ~~~~~~~ By Gary Spiteri Hello everyone and welcome to this issue of PD Chat! Those of you who were at the last general meeting know that the Annual General Meeting was also held and that the committee re-elected. I was elected to the newly created position of Public Domain/ Shareware Acquisitions. Cathy Tuck was voted in as Public Domain/Shareware Sales. This sharing of the job will allow both of us to spend more time doing our jobs and result in a better service. The position of PD Acquisitions has grown somewhat - I now have the entire library on hard drive and will be releasing new disks which will be passed onto Cathy for sale. At the last committee meeting (held on Friday 23rd August) I proposed some new ideas for the library and the committee agreed on the following ideas... 1) Archiving of the current library to free up more hard drive space. It is hoped that we can save 50% of space by using the latest version of LHarc 2) A monthly report on the previous months sales (in terms of what disks and how many) to be presented at each committee meeting. This will help monitor what disks are being sold, so I can concentrate on ordering similar software, to meet the demand. 3) The possibility of using the program UFO (Universal File Organiser) as an "online catalog". 4) The complete overhaul of the library - removing older versions and making entirely new disks - these will contain approx 700K each. 5) In the process of overhauling the library, a new set of categories will be introduced, these will be.... * Disk Utilities * Desk Utilities/Accessories * General Utilities * Pictures (including clipart) * Graphic Utilities * Fonts * Communications * Demo's (at half price) * Miscellaneous (+Emulators) * STE * Virus Killers * Educational * Languages * Magazines (I.I. and online) * Text files * Home Business (DTP/Applications etc) The half price demos disks will contain commercial product demos and the reduced price is a reflection of the fact that you are not getting a complete program. However at half price, it is hoped that this will stimulate your curiousity and so become more aware of what products are out there for the ST. 6) The introduction of subscribing to the Disk of the Month - with a new pricing system to suit. The committee agreed on: $3.00 each at meetings $3.00 + postage if ordered separately $30.00 subscription for 12 disks - this offer is open to non-members too. This will be a particular advantage to country members who cannot attend meetings, by subscribing they will now get a disk of the latest PD software each month. (Thanks to Jeff of Tamworth for the suggestion!) Of particular interest is the use of UFO as an online catalog. In this edition of Inside Info, I have included a copy of UFO and what is now the newly released "MUSIC" series of disks. On disks MUSIC.001 to MUSIC.018 are samples, modules and trackers all related to the NoiseTracker concept. (More on this in a moment...) If you run UFO.PRG you will be presented will a large dialog box with various buttons. Click on the LOAD button and then click on the Execute button, a file selector will appear - load in MUSIC.UFO. Please be patient, the loading takes a long, long time because UFO is sorting the data contained in the file. Eventually the large Dialog box reappears and in the largest button will be details of the Database called "Music". Click inside this box and it turns black like any other button - then click on execute and the display will change. Below is an approximation of what you will see in a GEM window with scroll bars..... DATABASE FILE: MUSIC 1 disks 27 folders 663 files 691 entries 28985 avail. -------------------- DISK: DRIVE.E -------------------- MUSIC\MUSIC.001\DIGICOMP <- folder name d_c_ref.doc 40492 8-24-91 8:51 pm --- digicomp.prg 99734 8-24-91 8:51 pm L-- Tracker <- category 1 DigiComposer v1.0 <- comment line read.me 660 8-24-91 8:56 pm --- MUSIC\MUSIC.001\MODPLAY modplay!.ttp 3534 5-03-91 4:07 am LMH <- rez STE only Brilliant STE only Module Player ^^^^^^^^^ modplay!.txt 1022 6-26-91 9:11 pm --- category 2 MUSIC\MUSIC.001\MODULES blood.mod 172364 8-11-91 12:52 pm --- Module The comment line in the above illustration is on a new line, but in UFO scrolling to the right will reveal the comment... As you can see this is the begining of the list of files on disk MUSIC.001. The labled parts of the list are.... Folder Name: Contains the name of the disk and the folder, in this case the folder is \DIGICOMP\ and is on disk MUSIC.001 Rez: The resolution in which the program runs is given as Low, Medium, High. A dash "-" means it doesn't work in that particular resolution and if there are three dashes "---" then resolution doesn't effect this file (data/text files etc) Categories: UFO supports 2 categories fields, in this particular database I have used "Tracker", "Sample", "Module", and "STE only". Using the two category fields I am able to specify a "Tracker" that is "STE only" etc etc. Using UFO you can search for combinations for example which programs are "STE only", a similar thing can be done by resolution. Comments: This line of text appears on the extreme right of the file entry, and is read by scrolling right with the scroll bars. Here I have written brief descriptions of the programs... So for example, DIGICOMP.PRG is a Tracker, works only in Low resolution, MODPLAY!.TTP is a program that runs in all resolutions and is STE only. To quit the program, close the GEM window by using the standard close window gadget in the top left corner of the window, this brings you back to the main dialog box, and from here click on "Quit". If this program is to be used, updates of the catagues will be sent as UFO files and "Merged" into the existing files using the merge function of UFO. Please check it out, and tell me your reaction to it, I'd really like to know if I'm doing the right thing. NEW PD TITLES ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This month there won't be too many new releases because I've been trying to find my way around the 4 cartridges. There will be a Disk of The Month at the next meeting, at the reduced price of $3.00 - More copies of it will be made so hopefully it will be attractive enough to get everyone who comes to the meeting to buy a copy. In terms of new material, I am about to start releasing material that came over on the 44 Meg cartridge I sent to Europe and more recently the 51 disks that arrived from Germany last week. This month I am releasing disks MUSIC.001 to MUSIC.018. These are all to deal with the NoiseTracker concept, in which sound samples are sequenced by a program called a Tracker into entire tunes, called modules. MUSIC.001 contains various trackers and module players for the ST and STE along with some samples and my favourite module to play. MUSIC.002 to MUSIC.013 contain modules MUSIC.014 to MUSIC.018 contain sample Any enquires about buying these disk should be directed to Cathy. Any enquires about new software, suggestions, comments, and in particular about UFO please contact me. - Gary Spiteri. <<<<*>>>><<<<*>>>><<<<*>>>>