Subject: New Extension / Accessories
From: Paul Hickman <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 14 Jul 1994 15:21:14 +0100

I have just uploaded a beta version of my easylife extension for AMOS pro for
aminet. New features are:

  - Support for loading and saving of XPK compressed data & banks (Not sprite
    & Icon banks, but now Andrew church has posted the format, I'm working on
    it).

  - Improved string searching commands.

  - A few bug fixes.

The extension is freeware. Distribute it as you see fit, but remember that this
is only a beta release - I believe the is a bug in the XPK load routine some-
where, as this has crashed a few times on me. Also included are 2 usefull
accessory programs:

VarChecker.AMOS
===============

This scans the a program in the AMOS Pro editor, and checks for:

  - Global variables being made global after they are used.

  - Global variables being made shared in some procedures.

  - Shared variables not be used in the procedure they are made shared with.

  - Global / Shared variables never being used / never having values assigned
    to them / never having their values read.

  - Using a variable before defining it (E.g. Add A,1 before A has been   
    initialised with e.g. A=0)

  - Never refering to a variable you have assigned a value to (E.g. A=5, then
    not using A again in the procedure)

If your programs pass these tests, you can be confident that you style of coding
is good, and that your programs contain fewer bugs.

Shorten.AMOS
============

Those who have beta tested my pratched text editor (Which I hope to release,
eventually - I'm still converting to AMOS Pro & doing 1001 other things) may
recognise this bit of code, which I have adapted to work with the AMOS Pro
editor. It takes a program, and strips away all comments, and optionally also
replaces all long names of variables/labels/procedures with shorter ones.

This saves space both on disk, and during execution.

Please let me know if you download these programs how you got on. Even if you
have nothing to say other than "I downloaded it, It worked". I'd like to hear
that everything is OK, just as much as bug reports/suggestions.